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THE
AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Volume IV
SARATOGA AND BRANDYWINE
VALLEY FORGE
ENGLAND AND FRANCE AT WAR
By SIR G. 0. TREVELYAN, Bart., O.M.
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
In Six Volumes. Crown 8vo ....
Separately, as follows : —
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Volume L, with Portrait and Map ....
Volume II., with Two Maps .....
Volume III., with Map and Complete Index to Volumes I. -III.
Crown 8vo .......
Volume IV., Saratoga and Ikandywine, Valley
Forge, England and France at War.
Crown 8vo, w ith Three Maps and Index .
GEORGE THE THIRD AND CHARLES FOX
The Concluding Part of "The American Revolution."
In Two Volumes. Crown 8vo. Qoth, gilt top.
Volume I., with a Map ......
Volume II., with Map and Index to both Volumes
NEW YORK: LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
THE
AMERICAN REVOLUTION
SARATOGA AND BRANDYWINE
VALLEY FORGE
ENGLAND AND FRANCE AT WAR
BY THE RIGHT HON.
SIR GEORGE OTTO TREVELYAN, BART.
AUTHOR OF "THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF LORD MACAULAY"
AND "THE EARLY HISTORY OF CHARLES JAMES FOX"
NEW EDITION'
Volume IV
NEW IMPRESSION
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO
55 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
LONDON, BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS
1922
Copyright, 1907, by
LONGMANS, GREKN. AND CO.
Copyright. 1912, by
LONGMANS, GREEN. AND CO.
Ali rights reserr'fd.
First Edition printed September. 1907; reprinted September. 1909.
New Edition, February. 191a; reprinted Kcbruary, 19x3;
January, 1915; December, 1917 : June, 1930; December, 1931.
PRINTED IN THB UNITKD STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
OF VOLUME IV
CHAPTER XXVIII
Relative forces of Howe and Washington
Outburst of Republican energy after Trenton
Henry Knox at Boston .
The War Governors — George Clinton
William Livingston
Jonathan Trumbull
Congress : Samuel Adams
Administrative work of Congressmen
The Provincial Assemblies
Franklin and the tobacco parcels .
Dearth of military stores
The American flint
The French muskets
PAGS
I
4
8
12
14
15
18
22
25
29
29
33
36
CHAPTER XXIX
Silas Deane and Ducoudray .
Washington and the foreign officers
Death of Ducoudray . . •
Loyalist activities ....
Governor Franklin ....
The Loyalists unwilling to enlist
Washington at Morristown
His mode of life ....
The army inoculated for the Small-pox
Washington plants himself at Middlebrook
38
40
44
45
47
51
53
54
55
58
VI
CONTENTS
Howe advances, and retires.
Howe abandons New Jersey
Defeat of General Stirling
FACE
60
63
CHAPTER XXX
The British Cabinet considers the plan of campaign
Germaine over-rules Sir William Howe, and orders an attack
upon Albany from three separate quarters
Burgoyne selected to command the Canadian army
Carleton's disinterested conduct
Burgoyne's army. His British Infantry
Riedesel and the Brunswickers
The Indians
Burgoyne's Speech to the Indians
His Proclamation .
The Politicians in Congress, and the Generals
Philip Schuyler. His unpopularity in New England
Horatio Gates .......
Misery of the Ticonderoga garrison
Description of the fortress, and of Lake Champlain
Investment and capture of Ticonderoga .
Destruction of the American Naval power on the Lake
Conflict at Hubbardtown, and complete success of Burgoyne
Reception of his victory in England ....
70
72
11
75
78
81
85
87
89
90
93
96
98
100
103
IDS
107
CHAPTER XXXI
Weakness and destitution of Schuyler's army .
He retires from Fort Edward to Stillwater
Washington sends him reinforcements .
Benedict Arnold at Danbury . . . .
Arnold repairs to Schuyler's headquarters
III
"3
114
116
119
120
The American forest-roads and water-ways
Burgoyne reaches Fort Edward. The difficulties of Transport
and Supply begin to be felt . . . . . -123
The Indian auxiliaries. Murder of Jane Mac Crea . . .125
CONTENTS vii
Washington sends General Lincoln to attack Burgoyne's com
munications ........
Washington's appeal to his countrymen ....
Enthusiasm in Massachusetts, New York, and Connecticut
Morgan's riflemen ........
Confidence felt in Schuyler by his army . , , .
He is superseded by Horatio Gates ....
Burgoyne cut off from Canada
The British advance to Saratoga
Bemis's Heights
Burgoyne's plan of battle
Arnold takes the offensive. The conflict at Freeman's Farm
After the battle. Burgoyne intrenches his position
Arnold removed from his command ....
Great and increasing strength of the American army
Burgoyne once more goes into action ....
Irruption into the field of Benedict Arnold
Retirement of the British, and desperate fighting inside their
lines. Arnold wounded
PAGE
Philip Skene of Skenesborough . . . . , .128
Burgoyne sends Colonel Baum into the Hampshire Grants . 129
John Stark and New Hampshire . . . . . • 131
Baum encamps near Bennington ..#... 133
Stark annihilates Baum's force . . . . . • 134
Colonel Breymann defeated with heavy loss . . , • '37
Beleaguerment of Fort Stanwix by Colonel St. Leger's forces . 139
Battle of Oriskany. Desperate peril of the American garrison 140
Arnold volunteers to relieve Fort Stanwix .... 143
Flight and sufferings of St. Leger's followers .... 144
CHAPTER XXXII
146
147
148
151
153
154
156
159
161
162
164
167
171
173
176
178
179
General Fraser's funeral 183
Burgoyne retreats by night 185
He is blockaded at Saratoga. Hopeless situation of his army 188
Negotiations for surrender. The Convention of Saratoga 191
viii CONTENTS
PAGE
The Capitulation 193
Honourable conduct of Gates and Schuyler .... 196
The journey to Boston . . . . . . . .198
Disappointment of Congress over the terms granted to Bur-
goyne .......... 202
Pretexts for violating the Convention 203
Burgoyne's troops retained in America as prisoners of war . 206
CHAPTER XXXIII
Anthony Wayne ......... 209
Washington's uncertainty as to Sir William Howe's intentions 211
The British fleet arrives in Delaware Bay, and leaves it for
the Chesapeake . . . . . . . .213
Germaine's negligence . . . . . . . .215
Washington marches through Philadelphia . . . .217
The Marquis de Lafayette 218
Meeting of Washington and Lafayette ..... 223
The British disembark in the Elk River .
Washington takes up a position on the Brandywine
The Battle : the Americans defeated
Wayne at Paoli. General Grey . . . .
The British army occupies Philadelphia .
224
226
229
232
235
Confident temper of the Americans 237
Germantown .......... 239
Commencement of the battle. The Chew mansion . . 240
Brilliant conduct of General Greene. Washington retreats . 245
Effect produced in Europe by the news of Germantown . . 249
Philadelphia beleaguered. The Delaware blocked . . .251
Arrival of Lord Howe and the British Fleet .... 255
Failure of the attack on Fort Mercer 256
Distress of the Philadelphian garrison . . • 260
Lord Howe attacks, and captures, Fort Mifflin . . . 262
Destruction of the American flotilla 265
CONTENTS
IX
CHAPTER XXXIV
Suspension of active hostilities
Political sentiments of Pennsylvania, and of Philadelphia
Saint Tammany ......
The British officers in Philadelphia
The Philadelphian ladies ....
Tarleton. Richard Fitzpatrick. Captain Andr^
The Meschianza
General Gates neglects to reinforce Washington
The camp at Valley Forge ....
Congress breaks up the administrative machinery of the army
The cold weather sets in. Heart-rending misery of the soldiers
The hospitals. Bethlehem .......
PACK
267
268
276
279
281
284
288
289
291
296
298
Congress recommends an advance against Philadelphia . . 301
Violent abuse of Washington and his Generals . . . 303
John Adams .......... 304
The Conway Cabal. Gates set up as a rival to Washington . 307
The Board of War. Washington's cruel position . . . 308
He takes decisive action. Quarrel between Gates and Wil-
kinson 310
Lafayette and Canada . . . . . . . •314
Discomfiture of Washington's political adversaries . . • 316
CHAPTER XXXV
Washington takes in hand the Commissariat
Plenty at Valley Forge ....
Defective training of the American army
Baron de Kalb on the Continental officers
Baron von Steuben ....
Light Horse Harry Lee ....
Mrs. Washington at Valley Forge .
Reception in camp of the news of a French Alliance
Sir William Howe succeeded by Sir Henry Clinton
Philadelphia blockaded by land. American privateering
Grievances, and hopeless situation, of the Loyalists
320
324
326
326
329
332
335
339
341
344
347
CONTENTS
CHAPTER XXXVI
Lord North's Conciliation Bills
Lord Carlisle .......
His impossible task ....
Clinton prepares to evacuate Philadelphia
PAGB
355
358
360
363
Clinton's reasons for retreating by land .
The Quakers
The British fleet and army leave Philadelphia
Washington pursues .....
Battle of Monmouth Court House .
Clinton arrives at New York ....
Disgrace of Charles Lee .....
Character and results of Washington's strategy
367
368
370
373
376
380
382
383
CHAPTER XXXV^II
Indifference in England to the news from America . . . 387
England's commanding position in 1763 .... 388
Foreign opinion unfavourably affected by George the Tliird's
home policy . . . . . . . . -391
Europe and the American Revolution 393
Humiliating condition of F* ranee after Chatham's War
The Due de Choiscul reconstructs the French navy
The French army ......
Fall of Choiseul from power .....
399
401
402
405
Enthusiasm for America in high French circles . . . 407
The Comte de Maurepas . . . . . . .412
The Comte de Vergennes . . . . . . -413
Vergennes recommends a system of treacherous hostility toward
England . . . . . .415
Conscientious scruples of Louis the Sixteenth . . • 416
CONTENTS
Xk
FAGk
Turgot opposed to interference in American affairs . . 418
He becomes the object of an aristocratical intrigue, and is
dismissed from office . 420
CHAPTER XXXVIII
Caron de Beaumarchais ; his origin, character, and career . 424
He is sent to England, espouses the American cause, and urges
the French Cabinet to vigorous action .... 427
Roderigo Hortalez and Company 430
Frederic of Prussia ........
His interests in Germany prompt him to embroil France with
England ......
Congress and the New Diplomacy .
Arthur Lee in Spain ....
He goes thence to Berlin
Arthur Lee and Hugh Elliot .
432
435
439
443
446
448
Franklin sails for France as Commissioner
His difficulties with other Americans at Paris .
His influence and popularity in France and Europe
His reception by Parisian Society . . . .
Franklin as a diplomatist
450
455
457
461
464
Policy which the French Ministers should have pursued in the
interests of France 466
Their support of the American Rebellion, and their prepara-
tions for invading England ...... 468
Tidings of Saratoga. Signature of the Treaties . . • 471
Reception of the American Commissioners at Versailles . . 473
War between France and England 475
Xil CONTENTS
APPENDICES
PACK
I. General Schuyler, and the New England troops . . 477
II. Extract from George Washington's Letter to Jonathan
Trumbull, of October 18. 1 7S0 . . . , . 478
III. Franklin, and the Russian Embassy .... 479
Map of the Countr\' which was the Scene of Operations
of the Northern Army ...... Facing 146
Map of Saratoga, and Bemis's Heights, in September
and October 1777 " 208
At the End of the W^hnne
Map of the Country between Morristown in New Jersey and Head
of Elk in Marylaud.
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
CHAPTER XXVIII
AFTER TRENTON. THE WAR GOVERNORS. CONGRESS AND
THE ASSEMBLIES. DEARTH OF MILITARY STORES
The battles of Trenton and Princeton had snatched
America from instant and utter ruin ; but for several
months to come her discomfiture was averted not by
her own strength, but by the indolence which beset,
and the illusions which misled, the British general.
On the sixth of January, 1777, the Republican army
arrived at Morristown in such a state of exhaustion
and disorder ''that a fresh and resolute body of five
hundred men might have demolished the whole." ^
Scores and hundreds of the younger soldiers had
turned aside for shelter into the woods all along the
line of march, and flung themselves down to sleep on
the carpet of pine-needles which covered the frozen
soil. When the last group of stragglers filed into the
village which had been selected for their winter
quarters, the entire force, regulars and militia to-
gether, amounted at the most to four thousand men.
For a long while to come the numbers of the army
never much exceeded, and at times even sank below, that
miserable figure. The comm.encement of March found
Washington still at the head of only four thousand
soldiers ; whereas, according to his computation. General
Howe had much more than twice that force already m
the Jerseys, available for an immediate advance. Why
in the world that officer hesitated to march upon
^ That is Gordon's account, which he in all probability had direct
from Washington himself. It is fully borne out by Washington's
despatches.
VOL. IV. B
2 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Philadelphia, and eat up Washington's army on the
way, was a source of standing wonder to Washington
himself. His confidential letters, during the earlier
part of the year 1777, compose a scathing and un-
answerable indictment of the British general's strategy.
"Howe's men," (so the American commander wrote,)
*'are well disciplined, well officered, and well appointed.
Ours are raw militia, badly officered, and under no
government. His numbers cannot, in any short time,
be augmented. His situation with respect to horses
and forage is bad, very bad, I believe. But will it be
better } No ; on the contrary, worse. With what
propriety then can he miss so favourable an oppor-
tunity of striking a capital stroke against a city from
which we derive so many advantages, which would
give such ^clat to his arms, and strike such a damp
upon ours } "
Such was the plan which, in Washington's opinion,
Howe ought to have adopted ; and what a competent
general most dreads, it is an axiom in warfare that
his opponent should do. The Royal army contained
Gorman officers, trained in the ideas of Frederic the
Great, — that untiring captain who kept the field in all
weathers, and who won Leuthen, the most brilliant
victory of his generation, on a December afternoon.
These veterans were now surprised and disgusted at
finding themselves under the orders of a commander
who religiously observed the antiquated fashion of
housing himself and his troops throughout the winter,
and who apparently interpreted that season as covering
all the spring, and some })ortion of early summer. The
gallant and experienced Von Donop, burning to show
that Hessians could fight effectively when they were
judiciously led, insisted on the principle that "with rebels
no campaign ought to be made," but that hostilities
should be pushed on continuously, in January as in July,
until the army of the insurgents was broken up, and their
government dissolved. \'on Donop was unquestion-
ably in the right. Here was a war which should have
AFTER TRENTON 3
been waged without intermission of time, or relaxation
of energy ; for the depth of winter was Sir William
Howe's most favourable opportunity. His ranks were
always full. His soldiers were always at his disposal.
Their regiment was their only home ; and, as long as
they were on the American side of the ocean, they had
no distractions which could tempt them from their
duty, and no occupations except to march and to fight.
Their professional spirit was high ; and they entertained
an honourable confidence that, on fair terms, they were
invincible in battle. " Our army is strong, finely
clothed and in excellent condition ; full of courage
and beautifully drilled ; capable of looking into the
white of the eye of Washington and all his tatter-
demalions." So a German captain once boasted ; and
in January 1777 that belief, and nothing short of it,
was the accepted creed of privates and officers in every
Royal brigade.
Howe's troops were very numerous ; while the cir-
cumstances of the time were such that he could never
expect them to be so numerous again. He had ten
thousand men in the Jerseys, with as many more in
New York City ; and New York, with Lord Howe's
battleships lying in the Bay, and his frigates scouring
the North and East Rivers, could safely spare almost
the whole of its garrison for active service in the open
country. Two fine divisions of infantry, moreover,
were eating King George's rations, and drawing his
pay, in their cantonments on Rhode Island, with no
advantage whatever to King George's interests. But
with Washington the case was very different indeed.
Warm weather brought his militia almost spontaneously
out of their villages ; but, when the autumn was over,
and the frost had set in, they were as hard to move from
their accustomed retreats as animals which had entered
upon their period of hibernation.^ Even those regular
^ General Schuyler, who had learned the fact from bitter experience,
said that "home-sickness in winter was the periodical American dis-
temper." American Archives for December, 1776.
62
4 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
levies, which were in course of enlistment for perma-
nent service in the Continental army, would not leave
for the front until the weather settled. Washington
complained that he had repeatedly written to all the
recruiting officers to forward their soldiers as fast as
they could arm and clothe them ; but month followed
month, and he could not get a man to come near him.
" To expect," he wrote, " that General Howe will not
avail himself of our weak state is, I think, to say in
so many words that he is unfit for the trust reposed in
him." 1
Sir William Howe greatly over-estimated the strength
of his opponent. The secrecy, the rapidity, and the
extraordinarily successful audacity of American tactics
during the last week of 1776, and the first week of
1777, had impressed the general of the British army
with an idea that he had been outnumbered as well
as out-mancLHivred ; and there was one at hand who
spared no pains to prevent that im|)rcssion from being
prematurely effaced. When George Washington deemed
it incumbent upon him to practise deception, he showed
capabilities and aptitudes which placed him on a level
with the most famous masters in the higher branches
of the art. He began by addressing himself to those
American generals who exercised separate commands
within touch, or hearing, of any portion of Howe's out-
posts ; — inciting them, in urgent and most specific
language, to ])rompt and strenuous, and above all to
ostentatious and noisy, action. He wrote for willing
eyes. George Clinton forthwith set his troops in mo-
tion, and cleared out the Royal garrisons from the
Western bank of the Hudson ; while General Heath, —
with almost quaint scrupulosity of obedience to the
injunctions of a chief by whom he had willingly allowed
himself to be superseded, and under whom it was his
pride to serve, — advanced in force upon King's Bridge.
On every one of eleven consecutive days there ensued
1 Washin^on to the President of G^ngrcss, 26th January, 1777; to
John Augustine Washington, 12th April. 1777.
AFTER TRENTON
5
alarms and excursions, with lavish firing of cannon and
muskets, accompanied by very little killing or wounding,
up and down the whole river-front of the Westchester
peninsula ; and the show ended by the kindling of
bonfires in long and well-ordered rows, so situated as
to convince the military authorities in New York that
a powerful American army was assembled at the point
most convenient for crossing the East River with a view
to assail the city.^ From his own ill-furnished lines
Washington sent forth detachments of partisans who
roved the adjoining districts far and near, capturing
trains of waggons and troops of prisoners, and diffusing
everywhere panic, and bustle, and rumour to an extent
out of all proportion to their own scanty numbers. On
the twenty-fifth January, as if he were already undisputed
master of the entire country-side, he issued a proclama-
tion declaring that all persons who had accepted Lord
Howe's offer of protection, and had sworn fidelity to
King George, must retire at once within territory occu-
pied by the British army, unless they were prepared to
take an oath of allegiance to the United States of
America. The citizens of New Jersey responded eagerly
to Washington's invitation. They did not want the
Hessians back into their parlours and store-chambers ;
they took the proposed oath freely, and observed it
a great deal better than they had observed its pre-
decessor ; and they gave very practical evidence of
having learned the lesson that promises of protection
are worth little to people who lack spirit to protect
themselves. Armed bands of resentful yeomen soon
beleaguered all the roads along which fresh meat and
vegetables travelled to New York, and along which salt
meat and biscuit were sent out to the British canton-
ments upon the Raritan River. Very little that would
tempt the appetite found its way to the mess-tables
1 " The enemy," (Washington wrote to Heath on the fifth January,)
"are in great consternation ; and it has been determined in council that
you should move down towards New York with a considerable force, as if
you had a design upon the city."
6 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
within the city ; and at New Brunswick, the advanced
post on the extreme flank of Howe's contracted lines,
there were days when the garrison had nothing to eat
at all.i
The leaders of the Revolution entertained a strong,
and most just, presentiment that the fighting, when it
again began in earnest, would neither flag, nor termi-
nate, until the issue of the struggle had been virtually
decided. It was for their adversary to settle whether
the interval which preceded a general clash of arms
was to be long, or brief ; but they fully appreciated the
value of every day, and every hour, which Sir William
Howe's procrastination placed at their disposal. The
task in front of them was of stupendous magnitude ;
and their labours were conducted under very peculiar
difficulties. Their army was still to make. Their
administrative system was confused in practice, and
totally incomprehensible in theory. The very idea of
a supreme national authority was new and unfamiliar
to Americans, and the exercise of it unpopular; each
State government had its own ways of doing public
business, which it not unfrcquently pursued with the
result of undoing the wiser work of others ; while the
functions and responsibilities of every man in a high
executive position remained uncertain and ill-defined,
and his official power was for the most part only such
as he could induce his countrymen voluntarily to con-
cede to him. But the sense of an imminent and
transcendent crisis stirred every heart, and nerved
every arm. Even those personal jealousies and an-
tagonisms, which were unpleasantly rife, quickened, at
least as much as they hampered, the activities of
ambitious soldiers and politicians. It was the season
of a great revival. Reasonable hope had succeeded to
blank despair; and the final and triumphant establish-
ment of the Republic was largely due to the feats of
creative energy which were accomplished, during the
^ The lie of the ground across New Jersey, between Philadelphia and
New York, may be seen in the large map at the end of this volume.
AFTER TRENTON J
first five months of i yyy^ by her agents on the continent
of Europe, and her servants at home.
Every corner throughout the entire workshop of the
Revolution was pervaded by Washington's influence,
which he was in a mood to exert pleasurably to him-
self, and acceptably to others. That external serenity,
which for a long while past he had maintained by dint
of constant and conscious effort, was henceforward the
natural expression and symptom of the tranquil and
hopeful spirit which reigned within. From this point
onwards, for many months to come, the reader of
his confidential letters ceases to notice those occasional
ejaculations of distress, and even of anguish, which
were wrung from him so long as he could discern no
end to the misery, and no light in the dark future, of
what he then so frequently described as his " bleeding
country." By every rule of war, as his cold reason
informed him, he still lay at the mercy of his an-
tagonist ; but none the less was he comfortably aware
that he had to do, not with the ideal army-leader whose
existence is taken for granted by writers on the Art of
Strategy, but with the actual lethargic personality of
Sir William Howe. A general who, with no military
justification whatever, had wasted one month, might in
all likelihood be counted upon to waste another, and
yet another. But the blow, though long postponed,
was certain to fall at last ; and, — come late, come
soon, — it should not be Washington's own fault if he
was unprepared to meet it. Active, vigilant, and
courteously but indomitably persistent, throughout this
momentous period he was a centre of force and vitality
for the whole Confederacy. Every successive post
carried forth, to all quarters of the compass, his spirited
exhortations, and minute workmanlike instructions,
with regard to the levying, officering, drilling, clothing,
and arming the additional battalions of regular soldiers
which Congress had empowered him to raise; and
almost every letter contained an earnest entreaty for
the temporary loan of militia regiments in sufficient
8 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
quantity to tide over the interval which necessarily
must elapse before his New Model Army, (for by that
historical and redoubtable name it had some title to be
called) was in a fit condition to take to the field. ^
Washington's principal coadjutor in his scheme of
miHtary reorganisation was General Henry Knox, whom,
during these months of fruitful activity, he sent as his
confidential lieutenant to the spot where judicious
management mii^ht be expected to produce the most
speedy and vakiable results. Boston, (as John Adams
told his wife with great justice,) was now the safest
place on the American continent. The citizens had
erected batteries on commanding points, and kept hulks
at the mouth of the harbour, ready to be scuttled and
sunk, for purposes of obstruction, in case of an attack
by the British fleet; but they had ceased to contem-
plate a second siege as a real and formidable pro-
bability. The consciousness of security did not render
them ungrateful or selfish. They recognised that their
own community, having been so generously and chival-
rously assisted in the hour of her sorest need, was
under a heavy obligation to other States and cities
which now were in the forefront of peril and the mid-
furnace of the war. It was an obligation which they
had adequate, and even over-abundant, means to dis-
charge. The province of which Boston, in defiance of
the most foolish and fatal Statute that ever received
the Royal Assent, was again the capital, pos.sessed the
power, as well as the will, to support more than her
due share of the common national burden. Massachu-
setts, with her large, homogeneous, and thickly planted
population, — always fer\'id, and, (ever since the great
Tory emigration,) all but unanimous, for the Revolution,
— was much the most fertile recruiting-ground to which
Washington had access. Her pro.sperity had revived ;
^ Washington's circular letter to the New England States, of January
the twenty-fourth, gives a stirring and striking exposition of the sacrifices
and exertions which, in his view, the situation demanded. It is well
worth perusal.
AFTER TRENTON 9
although the tide of her opulence no longer flowed
along the ancient channel ; for the commerce of Boston
with Great Britain was for the time destroyed quite as
efficaciously as the author of the Boston Port Bill
had desired and devised. That amount of success
undoubtedly attended Lord North's parliamentary legis-
lation. Boston, however, already enjoyed a substitute,
and more than an equivalent, for her former trade
with the mother country. She might now, in despite of
Downing Street, exchange goods with every mercantile
nation of Europe ; and she had discovered a gold-mine
in her opportunities for privateering. The Loyalists in
London were informed by a brother-exile, who had left
New England very early in 1777, "^"^^ the harbour of
Boston was strongly fortified, and that the inhabitants
were sanguine in their expectations of a French war,
and encouraged in their errors by Danish, French, and
Spanish traders, who swarmed in the port. " King
Street," (so this gentleman's account ran,) ''is almost as
much thronged with people of all nations as the Strand
and Cornhill ; two hundred and eighty-three prizes
carried in by the twenty-third December ; four vessels
with goods from France, with powder, small-arms,
clothing, and other articles ; one with twenty thousand
suits of military clothing, an article not a little wanted
among them." The gains of those concerned were
enormous. One young fellow had made twenty thou-
sand pounds sterling by privateering; and a remarkably
clever citizen, who formerly had been anything but a
Croesus, was now the busiest and most important, and
very nearly the richest, personage in Boston.^
Although Massachusetts was wilHng to spend her
wealth, both new and old, and her very considerable
resources of men and material, in furthering the cause
of the Revolution, she was not so ready to place herself
unreservedly at the disposal of the central government.
A genuine enthusiasm for the idea of a united America
^ Samuel Curwen to the Reverend Isaac Smith ; March 19, 1777.
10 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
took root early in the province, and grew fast; but
local patriotism, of an intense type, prevailed in many
quarters ; and in some powerful minds that sentiment
was narrow even to the verge of exclusiveness. The
representatives of Massachusetts in Congress had taken
a forward part in electing a Virginian to the post of
Commander-in-Chief. Their action met with the appro-
bation of their constituents, who had long admired
Washington from a distance, and who soon learned to
esteem him as favourably as if he had first seen the light
in one of the Beacon Street mansions which overlooked
the Common. They still, however, watched Virginians
in general with suspicion and dislike ; and, to their
view, Washington had far too many Southerners about
him. But that self-reliant and very discreet great man,
while he worked his staff-officers hard, and almost
mercilessly, was not in the habit of taking his opinions
from aides-de-camp or secretaries. He was firmly per-
suaded that the people of Massachusetts would do their
part, and more than their part, at that all-important con-
juncture, if, — and only if, — they were handled skilfully,
considerately, honestly, and (above all things) by one
of themselves.
The precise instrument which Washington required
lay within reach of his grasp. Henry Kno.x was at
home in Boston, and had that familiar acquaintance
with all her leading people which would naturally be
possessed by a very popular bookseller in the most
literary of cities. His fellow-townsmen were exceed-
ingly proud of him; and well they might be; for he
was a noted specialist in the branch of industry which
then concerned their safety the most. In the depth of
a frightful winter he had brought southwards, through
a pathless wilderness, the train of battering cannon
which eventually expelled the invader from Boston ;
during a night of tempest he had transported across
the Delaware the large contingent of field-pieces that did
so much to decide the event at Trenton ; and in battle
he was never contented until his guns, and he, were
AFTER TRENTON H
within point-blank range of the enemy. A homely
warrior, till the close of his life he looked the pro-
sperous tradesman. He was welcome everywhere with
his jolly, rolHng figure, and his hearty voice, which had
often risen loud and clear above much more terrifying
noises than the street-traffic on a Boston pavement.^
General Knox repaired to his native city ostensibly
with the object of raising a battalion of artillery ; but
he was entrusted by the Commander-in-Chief with an
unwritten commission to use his influence, his experi-
ence, and his tact in supervising the general military
arrangements of Massachusetts. Washington, — who
kept his powers of mystification for Sir William Howe,
and did not expend them on his own countrymen, — told
the State authorities that he relied upon them to supply
recruits for his new battalions in proportion, not to the
actual population of the province, but to the excessive
and exceptional numbers which they had put into the
field already. His frankness evoked a very practical
response. Massachusetts had contributed three quarters
of the force that first blockaded Boston. During the
cruel and prolonged campaign, which had only just
ended, her sons fought in every engagement, starved
and shivered at every bivouac, and lay buried by
hundreds in those hospital cemeteries which were the
winter quarters for so many soldiers of that hapless
army. She had despatched sixteen thousand men to
the front in 1775, and fourteen thousand in 1776; and
yet, before the peace came, she sent nearly forty
thousand more into the Continental ranks. It was a
contingent all but double of that which was furnished
by any other State in the American Union.^
^ In 1803 General Knox was still a favourite with Bostonians of both
sexes, young and old. His outward appearance was less martial than ever.
" General and Mrs. Knox," (we are told,) " grew to be enormously stout,
and were perhaps the largest couple in the city of New York at the time
when Washington was inaugurated as first President of the United
States." A GirVs Life Eighty Years ago, being Selections from the
Letters of Eliza Southgate Bourne\ New York, 1903.
2 These figures are taken from the Report communicated to Congress
in 1790 by General Henry Knox, then Secretary of War. He remarks
12 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
In several of the most populous, and critically
situated, among the States, Washington had the com-
fort and advantage of being able to rely on the services
of a trustworthy auxiliary belonging to his own social
class, and animated by the same lofty and disinterested
motives as those which guided his own conduct.
Among the actors who walked the stage during the
performance of that prolonged drama, there was no
more striking and characteristic group than the great
war governors of the Revolution. The Prefect of a
French Department, between the years 1800 and 18 14,
was a functionary as essential to the success of mihtary
operations as the general who led a division in the
field. Napoleon's Grand Army depended for its exist-
ence on the administrator at home, whose vocation it
was to keep Jacobins and Royalists in order; to see
that the taxes were punctually paid, the magazines full,
and the manufactories of uniforms and camp-equip-
ments busy; to hunt up refractory conscripts; and to
start batch after batch of recruits on the first stage of
their journey towards the hostile frontier. Provincial
Governors in the United States, between 1776 and
1782, had very similar duties to those of a Prefect of
the First French Plmpire; but they resembled him in
little else. Their exact parallel may rather be found
in those Puritan country gentlemen who, in the summer
of 1642, travelled down from Westminster to raise and
organise the armed power of their respective counties
in opposition to the Crown. These American Governors
were not professional placemen, appointed from above,
and taken from outside the province which was
committed to their supervision. Every one of them
"had established, and held for himself, the position of
leading citizen in his own town, — that most valued
and intangible of American distinctions " ; and in a time
of confusion and peril the inhabitants of each locality,
that, as far as relates to the Regular Army, the numbers are "stated from
the official Returns deposited in the War Office, and may be depended
upon."
THE WAR GOVERNORS 1 3
who derived their origin from a nation which honoured
and followed its squires, almost instinctively accepted
the most important and respected among their neigh-
bours as their natural leader.
Such was George Clinton, a soldier who came from
a long line of civil and military dignitaries, and rural
magnates. One of his ancestors had fought for Charles
the First, and had lost his patrimonial estate in England
as a punishment for his loyalty. Another brought
over a large party of immigrants from Ireland, and
founded a settlement on the Hudson River.^ George
Clinton himself was the first popularly elected Governor
of New York State, and he retained his post throughout
the war, fighting his administrative district as a stout
captain fights his ship in battle; taking no hoHdays
himself, and very parsimonious in the matter of fur-
loughs, or exemptions from service, for others ; sternly
enforcing the penal code of war against spies and
deserters ; exceedingly sharp in his methods with
mutineers and rioters ; and never shrinking, in a case
of public necessity, from fearless and autocratic action.
He understood his countrymen, whose pride and satis-
faction in being governed strongly by a man of their
own choice, born amongst them, are in proportion to
their distaste for being either ruled, or represented, by
a stranger; — a feeling which the electoral provisions of
their written Constitutions, State and Federal alike, so
legibly and unmistakably indicate. After a first, and
a very crucial, experience of George Clinton as their
Governor, his fellow-citizens re-elected him no fewer
than six times, and in each case for a full triennial
period. He died, rich in years and in repute, during
his second term of office as Vice-President of the
United States.^
1 A kinsman, and an early patron, of George Clinton was a Royal
Governor of New York State, and the father of the Sir Henry Clinton
who succeeded General Howe as Commander-in-Chief in America.
2 Thomas M'Kean wrote to John Adams, from Philadelphia, in June
l8i2: "Our venerable friend Clinton has gone before us. So has the
14 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Such, again, was William Livingston, the Governor
of New Jersey. He belonged to a numerous, and
exceedingly powerful, family residing within a vast
manor of three hundred thousand acres, which in the
seventeenth century had been acquired from the abori-
ginal inhabitants partly by purchase, and partly, (if
New York Tory gossip is to be accepted as evidence,)
by the very simple expedient of periodically rolling the
boundary-stones farther back into Indian territory.
The ancestor of the Livingstons sprang from an ancient
and noble house in Scotland. A preacher of the
Reformed Church in that country, he was driven into
exile after the Restoration by episcopal persecution,
and died at Rotterdam. The most notable among his
descendants was from youth upwards a fierce Pres-
byterian. William Livingston was educated at Yale
College, a veritable nursery of militant Whiggism,
where he used to entertain his fellow-students by his
rough and contemptuous sallies against the theory of
Passive Obedience ; and he now was completely in his
element as the armed ruler of a population which
bitterly repented having made a sincere attempt to
put that ancient Jacobite doctrine into actual practice,
with such lamentable consequences to their granaries,
their herds, and their plate-chests. " New Jersey,"
(so a French officer reported to his government,)
** which almost touches the fortifications of New York,
has displayed heroic constancy. Its militia assembles
of its own accord at the sight of a red coat. Their
Governor is a Roman. The Republicans call him
Brutus; the Royalists an American Nero." ^ Repub-
illustrious Washington, eleven years ago. I remain the only surviving
member of the first American Congress, held in the City of New York in
October 1765 ; and but three more, of whom you are one, remain alive
of the second, held in this city in September, 1774." Those three were
Adams, Jefferson, and Charles Carroll of Annapolis, "a very sensible
gentleman, a Roman Catholic, and of the hrst fortune in America."
Carroll long survive! all the other "signers" of the Declaration of
Independence ; and his countrymen watched his state of health, and
counted his birthdays, with a reverential, and somewhat pathetic, interest.
^ B. F. Steven's Facsimiles ^ Letter 1616.
THE WAR GOVERNORS 1 5
licans and Royalists united in speaking of him as a
very indifferent orator ; but he could make his meaning
plain. ^ William Livingston never shirked the avowal
of his principles, or blinked at the ultimate conclusions
towards which they logically conducted him. As early
as July 1778 he flatly pronounced that to maintain
negro slavery was inconsistent with Christianity, and
peculiarly odious and disgraceful in Americans, who
professed to idolise liberty.
When the Civil War broke out, Jonathan Trumbull
was already Governor of Connecticut. At an early
stage of the controversy he perceived that it would be
impossible for him to reconcile the conflicting claims
of a divided patriotism, and that he must choose between
the country whence his forefathers came, and the soil
on which he had been born and bred ; — between the
King under whose authority he held office, and the
people who were entrusted to his charge. The hour
for decision arrived ; and he declared for the Revolu-
tion. He had seen his sixty-fourth birthday ; but the
vigour of his mind was not abated ; and, if his body
was more frail than in the past, that was Jonathan
Trumbull's own concern, and he kept the knowledge
of it to himself. His advanced years entailed upon
him no visible drawbacks, and in some respects con-
tributed much to his value and efficiency. He ruled
his province absolutely, in paternal fashion, and with
patriarchal authority. " Governor Trumbull," said a
foreigner who knew Connecticut well, *' governs this
State as he pleases." Moreover he was at a time of
life when his sons, — with whom, like a true New
Englander, he was abundantly provided, — had all
reached the military age ; while some among them
were of mature years, and versed in practical business.
They entered the Republican army ; and Trumbull,
who seldom begged a favour, was always willing to use
his interest for the purpose of getting them employed
^ Judge Jones's History of New York, Volume I., Chapter I. Diary
of John Adams, Aug. 27, and Sept. i, 1774.
l6 ^ THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
where bullets were flying. One of them was ere long
appointed Comptroller of the Treasury, and another
died Commissary General of the national forces. The^
all had habitually lived with their father upon terms of
respectful, but affectionate and fearless, intimacy ; and
thus it came about that the Governor of Connecticut was
provided with authentic intelligence, from the head-
quarters of war and administration, by members of his
own family, imbued with his own public spirit, and shar-
ing his reverence for facts and realities, and his quiet dis-
dain of uncharitable criticism and idle scandal.
Trumbull was a representative American, who had
turned his hand to many things, had grasped them
firmly, and kept them all ready for use when occasion
called. During nearly the whole of his working career
he was engaged in trade ; and he had made himself an
erudite, a skilful, and an honoured lawyer. He sat
nineteen years as a Judge in Probate, and four years as
Chief Justice of his Colony. After quitting college he
had studied divinity, with the intention of becoming a
clergyman ; and the Bible had taught him much which
stood him in stead when his time of trial came. The
higher soul of the Revolution is embodied in the im-
mense collection of Trumbull's public and private letters.
His calm and lofty self-possession, fed from a source
which earthly dangers and disasters could not agitate
or perturb, was the stay and solace of many a despon-
dent colleague. He faced his colossal toil cheerfully
and hopefully, in the belief that he held a commission
from an all-wise and all-powerful Master, and that an
account of his labours must be duly rendered in a
higher quarter than the Board of War at Philadelphia.
" We have this year seen the wonderful ways, and
marvellous works, of the Lord. When we are doing
our duty, and using such means as He hath put in our
power, we may then stand still, and hope to see our
salvation." 1 That was Trumbull's creed; and that
^ Letter from Jonathan Trumbull of February 26, 1776. The Massa-
chusetts Historical Collections ; Series VII., Volume 2.
THE WAR GOVERNORS 1 7
was his constant practice. His friendship and co-opera-
tion were very helpful to Washington, who derived
much satisfaction from the substance of his letters,
which were always to the point ; and who found no
fault with their sincere and impressive, if somewhat
archaic, style. ^ The civilian, when writing to the
soldier, did not obtrude his opinion on questions of
military tactics ; but he displayed a remarkable appre-
ciation of military exigencies, and he was unequalled
in his mastery over the art of supplying the urgent and
manifold demands of war. In August 1776, when New
York was threatened, and Washington despatched to
Connecticut a pressing request for reinforcements, the
Governor replied that he had already ordered out four-
teen regiments of substantial farmers, whose business
could ill spare them in harvest-time, but whom the
General was at liberty to retain till the immediate peril
was over. " I cannot," returned Washington, ** suffi-
ciently express my thanks for your strenuous exertions,
and prudent forecast in ordering matters so that your
force has generally been collected and put in motion as
soon as it is demanded." During the last six years of
the war, — when the country everywhere was growing
very weary, and the martial spirit had perceptibly slack-
ened in some leading States, — the Continental army
continued to draw an annual average of four thousand
three hundred recruits from the townships of Connecti-
cut. Intense as were Trumbull's political convictions,
through all that cruel and angry period he ruled like a
patriot rather than a partisan ; and, mindful of peace in
the midst of war, he was at pains to prepare his fellow-
1 "The honorable Congress has, with one united voice, appointed you
to the high station you possess. The Supreme Director of all events has
caused a wonderful union of hearts and counsels to subsist amongst us.
Now, therefore, be strong and very courageous. May the God of the
armies of Israel shower down the blessing of His divine providence on
you, give you wisdom and fortitude, and cover your head in the day of
battle ! " Those were the terms in which Trumbull congratulated Wash-
ington on his nomination as Commander-in-Chief ; and Washington re-
sponded in a similar vein.
VOL. IV. C
l8 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
citizens for the duties and responsibilities, which awaited
them in a happier future, by directing their footsteps
into the paths of antique prudence, frugahty, and probity.
Monsieur Guizot once asked James Russell Lowell how
long, in his anticipation, the American republic was
likely to endure. ** So long," was the answer, '* as the
ideas of its founders continue to be dominant : " and
Lowell went on to explain that, by their ideas, he meant
also the traditions of their race in government and
morals. Those ideas and traditions are nowhere more
vividly and instructively exemplified than in the actions
and writings, the life and the character, of Jonathan
Trumbull of Connecticut.
George Washington, and Jonathan Trumbull, live in
the memory of their compatriots as chiefs and leaders
of heroic proportions and stainless rejnitation ; but a
different fate has overtaken another set of Revolutionary
celebrities who never were lukewarm, and never idle, —
and who accomplished, if not the best, at all events the
most, of which they were capable. The politicians who
sat in Congress during the war got small commendation
in their own litctime, and, (for the most part,) less than
no thanks from History. It was not to be expected
that the members of an assembly which issued the
Declaration of Independence should enjoy the gratitude
and esteem of those among their contemporaries who
favoured the British connection. The view held in the
Royal army with reference to the American delegates
at Philadelphia was fairly summed up by an officer who
called them " a pack of scamps " ;^ while civilian writers
on the Tory side represented them as upstarts and
nobodies who had ousted their natural superiors from
the government of an unhappy country. Sarcasm and
censure, coming from that quarter, are read without
surprise ; but it must likewise be admitted that very
^ Military letter of Feb. 1779 ; quoted in the Penmylvania Magazine
for July 1S98.
CONGRESS AND THE ASSEMBLIES 19
little ink has been expended in praise or defence of
Congress by certain American authors whose testimonials
to Whig merit are in most cases extravagant in eulogy,
and emotional to the verge of bombast. More than one
historian in whose eyes Washington was a demigod, and
every Revolutionary colonel a theme for Plutarch, has
very few complimentary epithets to bestow upon the
Congressmen. Virtue, — such virtue as they had, whether
much or scanty, — was in their case her own reward.
But they were tough fellows who loved their work ; who
cared little what hard words it earned them even when
they were still alive to hear ; and who had no leisure
to feel uneasy about the figure they would present to
posterity. If posterity has been unfair to them, it can-
not be denied that, in one important respect, they brought
their fate upon themselves. Tradition and literature in
the United States have judged the men of the past
favourably, or harshly, according as their attitude
towards Washington was friendly, or the reverse ; and
there were long periods when many Congressmen spent
all the time which they could spare from their executive
duties in intriguing against their own Commander-in-
Chief. That is a circumstance which American patriots
can never forget, nor easily bring themselves to pardon.
The balance of posthumous justice has inclined unduly
against the Congressmen as a class ; but, even so, there
is a certain satisfaction in noting that, once at least
in the course of the world, some people have been
properly, although perhaps excessively, punished for
declining to recognise and welcome a great man when
they were fortunate enough to possess one.
When a later generation sits in judgment upon any
famous combination of individuals who exercised autho-
rity during a great crisis in the past, — whether it be
the Roman Senate, or the States-General of Holland in
the contest against Philip the Second, or the Spanish
Cortes during Napoleon's invasion of the Peninsula, —
there is a natural tendency to leave out of view the
successful results which were brought about by their
C2
20 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
energy and zeal, and to devote an altogether dispropor-
tionate attention to their mistakes, their imperfections,
and their failures. Scandals and confusions are never
absent where executive business is carried on, not by
the silent written injunctions of a responsible minister,
but in hot debate, and by open vote. A general or
an administrator, who keeps his own counsel and who
knows his own mind, may effectually conceal from
public observation all the less admirable qualities of
intellect and temper which are inevitably and unpleas-
ingly conspicuous in the transactions of a popular
assembly ; and those defects were plentiful and promi-
nent in the American Congress.
Samuel Adams was the most powerful of all Con-
gressmen. He had aroused Massachusetts, — and,
through Massachusetts, every other of the thirteen
colonies, — into rebellion against the Crown ; but in his
own case the spirit of opposition, and the passion for
independence, did not limit themselves to a quarrel with
George the Third and George the Third's ministers.
Samuel Adams, from boyhood to old age, was aglow with
inextinguishable ambition ; but he was ambitious for an
idea. His political Utopia consisted in government by
a representative assembly which should not delegate
executive authority to anyone outside its walls, but
should conduct even the smallest details of administra-
tion through the direct personal agency of its own
members. That was the day-dream of his youth, which
during seven years of his later manhood he converted
into a living reality. To enforce that view he had long
ago used, with extraordinary dexterity, the New Eng-
land institution of the Town-meeting. He disseminated
his doctrines far and wide in the congenial soil of the
Northern colonies, where he persuaded the electors to
fill the Provincial Assemblies with men who belonged
to his own school of politics. The ablest of these
associates accompanied him into Congress ; and he was
there surrounded by allies and disciples sworn to dis-
courage the appointment of official placemen, and to
CONGRESS AND THE ASSEMBLIES 21
check the growth of any non-elective civilian or mili-
tary hierarchy within the Republic, quite as jealously
and watchfully as they resisted the encroachments of
the British Parliament and the Royal Prerogative from
without.^
Congress, at the beginning of its career, discharged
honestly those high duties which it had fearlessly
assumed. In a representative body, which keeps too
much public business in its hands, public money is apt
to stick to the fingers of the less respectable members ;
but, during the earlier years of the Revolution, pecula-
tion and embezzlement were not safe and easy trades
in an atmosphere impregnated by the austere influence
of Samuel Adams. Primitive in the strictness and
plainness of his life, and so indifferent to gain that he
incurred reproach among his fellow-townsmen as a bad
provider for his family, he was incorruptible himself,
and a terror to those who in the matter of corruption
would gladly have been evil-doers. From the first
there was some tendency among the delegates at
Philadelphia towards the system of mutual good offices
which, in the less stately nomenclature of modern
politics, is called log-rolling ; but that tendency pre-
vailed as between State and State, and not as between
man and man.^ It may be fairly claimed that Congress,
in its earlier sessions, would not suffer by a comparison,
on the score of purity, with some very reputable and
^ The Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States^
Edited Under Direction of Congress by Francis Wharton. The account
of Samuel Adams in V^harton's Introduction is an admirable specimen of
condensed political biography.
'■^ Washington complained that, in consequence of the intimate under-
standing which existed among the Eastern States, high appointments in
the army went almost exclusively to New Englanders ; and John Adams
regretted that Congress had voted the purchase in Philadelphia of
clothing for the troops, which might probably have been got cheaper in
New York. He spoke with disapprobation of the private friendships and
enmities, the provincial views and partialities, which intermingled in the
consultations. "These," he said, "are degrees of corruption. They are
deviations from the pubUc interest, and from rectitude."
22 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
self-satisfied Parliaments in less disturbed times, and
in older countries.
In later stages of the war the obstinate determina-
tion of Congressmen to monopolise the functions of
administration was productive of inconveniences and
misadventures. The arrangement at last broke down,
and was reformed in some important particulars; but
it was not ill adapted to the unforeseen and unprece-
dented situation of the country during that period
which immediately followed upon the outbreak of
hostilities. For, in the first place, a dominant and
potent central assembly afforded the rallying-point for
a number of separate communities, unaccustomed to
work together in common, and strongly affected by
local prejudices and aims. Through the instrumentality
of Congress, (as has been well remarked,) the States
were kept in touch with one another in a manner that
had never before been possible ; and men learned to
recognise broader interests than those which were
bounded by narrow State lines. And again, when all
has been said for and against, the fact remains that
Congress, in the spring of 1775, had no choice but to
assume full and instant responsibility for the entire
public administration. The war swooped down, like
a thunder-cloud in summer, upon a society unequipped
and unorganised, — with no army, no fleet, no accepted
methods of national action, and no machinery of
national finance. An enormous and multifarious mass
of work had to be undertaken at once, and pushed
forward at des|)crate speed. The most capable men
in America found themselves gathered together on the
spot, with a large supply of energy to s{)are over and
above that which was required for the purposes of
legislation. Each great Department was entrusted to
a Committee numbering from four to ten members,
who, at the beginning, were taken from the flower of
the Assembly. The most industrious and celebrated
of these bodies were known as the Board of War and
Ordnance ; the Board of Treasury ; the Committee of
CONGRESS AND THE ASSEMBLIES 23
the Navy ; and the Committee of Secret Correspondence,
which ultimately was developed into the Committee of
Foreign Affairs. Congress governed by means of pro-
cesses very similar to those adopted by our own Long
Parliament, and by the National Assembly of France
in the agony of civil dissension and foreign war which
in the Spring of 1792 convulsed and assailed that
country. Such processes, unconstitutional in theory,
but passably effective in practice, carried the American
Republic safe through her first and most serious perils,
and have procured for their authors an occasional
tribute of sincere, though carefully measured, gratitude.
" The memory of the Continental Congress," (so writes
a discerning historian,) ''is bound up with that portion
of our national history which we contemplate with
peculiar pride ; with the sacrifices and the sufferings,
more cruel than the grave, of the eight years of war ;
with the poverty, and the struggles, of the six years
of peace that preceded the organisation of the Federal
Government. The republics which the Long Parlia-
ment and the National Assembly set up have long since
disappeared from the face of the earth. The republic
which the Continental Congress set up still endures."^
Congress had taken an immense burden on to
shoulders which were none too broad ; for it bore yet
another resemblance to the Long Parliament, and the
French Convention, in the circumstance that it became
a smaller and smaller body as time went on. In this
case, however, the diminution arose from less sinister
causes. The ranks of the American Assembly were not
depleted by the guillotine, or by such drastic operations
as Pride's Purge. The need of administrative ability,
and patriotic devotion, was so imperative in so many
quarters that men of force and talent were freely with-
drawn from senatorial duties in order to serve their
country elsewhere, and in other capacities. Before
the close of 1776 Benjamin Franklin had sailed for
France as Commissioner at the Court of King Louis.
1 Paper on the Continental Congress^ by Herbert Friedenwald.
24 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Eminent Congressmen, all the American Continent over,
were governing provinces, leading troops in battle, or
fulfilling special missions of great moment and pro-
tracted duration. Some delegates remained at their
distant homes from want of sympathy with the Revolu-
tion, and others because they were fairly bewildered
and frightened by the portentous labours which awaited
them in Philadelphia. After the first eighteen months
of war the numbers present on the benches never rose
above five-and-thirty, and sometimes fell as low as
twenty-three. There were, moreover, not a few Con-
gressmen who, — while they were glad enough, on a
pretext of public duty, to take up their temporary
residence in the most luxurious of American cities, —
had discovered that Philadelphia contained more agree-
able resorts than the hall at the Kast end of her State-
house. Northern members alleged that some delegates
from beyond the Potomac, "immersed in the pursuit
of pleasure," insisted that Congress should not meet
till nine in the morning, never came near the j^lace till
eleven, and then consumed what was left of the sitting
by an exhibition of that facile Southern eloquence which
already began to pall upon colleagues who hailed from
colder and sterner latitudes.^ The evil was incapable
of cure ; inasmuch as the Chair had no authority to
compel attendance, and private remonstrances against
idleness and loquacity had to be very cautiously
worded when addressed to a high-mettled gentle-
man from Georgia or Virginia. And so it came about
that an inordinate share of drudgery was imposed
upon a scanty band of members wiio manned all the
Committees, and very seldom missed an hour of the
proceedings in Congress. ** This service," (one of them
wrote,) " is too severe. I have had the weight of North
Carolina on my shoulders within a day or two of three
months. I have sat some days from six in the morning
till five, and sometimes six, of an afternoon ; and often
without eating and drinking." "The papers," (so
1 Titus Hosmer to Jonathan Trumbull ; Philadelphia, Aug. 31, 1778.
CONGRESS AND THE ASSEMBLIES 2$
another letter ran,) " will inform you that I have been
thrust into Congress. I find there is a great deal of dif-
ference between sporting a sentiment on politics over a
glass of wine, and discharging the duty of a senator." ^
The work of Congress was supplemented by the
independent exertions of minor senates, planted down
at intervals throughout the extensive area which the
rebellion covered. Each State possessed its Assembly ;
and every Assembly acted not only as a Legislative
body, but as a local Committee of Public Safety for
promoting the cause of the Revolution. The Tories
had circulated letters, which purported to emanate
from Lord Howe, exhorting voters ** to send only
King's friends " to the Assemblies; but the author of
that appeal, whether he was Lord Howe or another,
proved to be no match at electioneering for Samuel
Adams and his emissaries. Almost all the representa-
tives who were chosen, and all who ventured to put in
an appearance and take part in the deliberations, were
staunch opponents of the King's Government. Whether
their work lay in Congress, or at the capitals of their
respective States, the public men of America had their
fill of business. Hurrying from the Committee-room to
the Council-chamber, and back again to their Committee
when the debate was over ; chafing under dull, and still
more impatiently under flowery, speeches ; sitting
through the summer when Philadelphia was made all
but intolerable by '' the excessive heat of the sun reflected
from the buildmgs and the pavements ; " or sitting
through the winter at Fishkill, by the Hudson River,
in a place of meeting so damp and cold that the New
York Convention was fain to beg the iron stove from
the Presbyterian Church at Albany; — such was their
course of existence from year's end to year's end, and a
hard life they found it. With no opportunity to earn a
livelihood for the support of their absent families, they
were unable to remit home a single dollar out of the
wretched salaries on which they lodged and fed them-
^ American Archives for July 1776.
26 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
selves with ever-increasing difficulty as articles of con-
sumption became scarcer, and paper money more
disastrously abundant. ^ But their patriotism never
flagged. They laboured fiercely, and they achieved
much, though not always by the most judicious means,
or exactly in the right direction. The States were
often at cross-purposes with Congress, and not unfre-
quently took steps which caused embarrassment at the
headquarters of the army. Washington had occasion
to remonstrate with the New York Convention for
having confiscated for the use of their regiments twenty-
six bales of clothing which were in course of transport
to his camp at Morristown ; General Greene reported
that certain local authorities, along the New England
coast, encouraged the sea-service to the detriment of
military recruiting, and that " the success of privateer-
ing had set all the troops distracted ; " and oflficers who
superintended the re-enlistments for the new army
encountered technical difficulties of a very serious nature
from the lavishness displayed by various provincial
governments in the matter of bounties. The New Eng-
land States agreed among themselves to add fifteen
dollars to the sum of twenty dollars which Congress
had voted; and Massachusetts, thinking nothing too
good for a cultivator who would leave his farm to defend
his country, offered double that increased amount of
money to the rank and file in her own battalions. But
the diffused energy which permeated the Confederacy,
— during that season of preparation for an arduous, and
probably a decisive, campaign, — seldom failed, even
when misdirected, to produce some material effect in
some important quarter. The flannels and woollens, on
^ As early in the Revolution as December 1776, at the time when
Congress had taken refuge at Baltimore, a Rhode Island delegate wrote
home that he was obliged to pay six dollars a week for his board.
" Every article of living," he said, *' has been doubled within a year or
two. I ask no more from the State than to give me a decent support
while I am in its service." A Congressman at Philadelphia described
himself as unable to spare a simple dav, in the course of nine months,
**for a little excursion into the country " to visit his family.
CONGRESS AND THE ASSEMBLIES 2 J
which the New York Convention had laid hands, kept
the cold from one set of Republican soldiers, instead of
from another ; the liberal bounties voted by Massachusetts
enabled husbands and fathers to feel that the children
would have enough to eat while they themselves were
on the march to Saratoga ; and, though the mariners of
Salem and Providence might have done good service in
Washington's ranks, they were more useful still on board
the cruisers which kept the war going by their captures
of military stores, and of mercantile cargoes that were
sold for the relief of what otherwise would, from time
to time, have been an empty Treasury.
Never before had so minute a number of men, so
little trained to public affairs, been confronted by such
a multitude of formidable operations which had all to be
taken in hand simultaneously under dire penalties. The
Congressmen of 1776 and 1777 handled some matters
very badly ; but they faced difficulties and dangers, as
fast as they arose, with business-like promptitude ; and
they attacked one question of high administration after
another, and sometimes ten of a morning, with hearty
zest and unfailing self-confidence. In the course of
nineteen months they framed and promulgated four
successive army-systems ; each of which, in spite of
grave defects, had at least this merit about it, that it
produced some sort of army. They were entirely unac-
quainted with the royal courts of Europe, and had no
personal relations with any European statesman ; they
were served abroad by envoys some of whom spoke no
language except English, or so much as understood the
meaning of the word " Protocol ;" and yet they pushed
their advances in every quarter, and were deterred by
no rebuff. They were vigilant in their dealings with the
Indians both beyond and within the frontier ; punishing
murderous inroads with exemplary, if sometimes tardy,
severity ; and conciliating the friendly and neutral tribes
by the careful observance of ceremonies and customs
which were much more familiar to their own experience
than the etiquette of an Austrian or a Spanish palace.
28 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
The officer whom they selected as their representative
at an Indian interview was invariably conversant with
the stately formalities, and the figurative language of
solemn compliment, which the occasion demanded ; and,
when the conference was satisfactorily concluded, he
could play the host, without any outward signs of re-
pugnance, at the head of an overloaded table. ^ They
managed, and mismanaged, the Republican finances ;
apportioning taxation between the States ; voting enor-
mous supplies of money, if that word could be applied
to the Continental paper; and negotiating loans of very
much more restricted amounts, but indefinitely greater
purchasing power, at Paris, at Amsterdam, and, — by
the exercise of almost superhuman importunity and
pertinacity, — even at Madrid. When the value of the
government notes began to fall, (which occurred almost
as soon as the ink upon them was dry,) Congress, in its
ignorant optimism, believed itself to have discovered a
remedy in the fixing of a tariff for commodities. Salt
was to be sold at eight shillings a bushel, and Bohea tea
at three shillings a pound ; and tradesmen were warned
that, if they asked more for their goods than the regu-
lation prices, or if they insisted on being paid in silver
dollars, " they might depend upon being held up as ene-
mies to their country, without respect of persons."
* Major Henry Livingston, of the Third New York Continental
Line, gives a curious account of a meeting with the Chiefs of the
Caghnawaga nation, which had lately been approached by Governor
Carleton of Canada with an t>ffer of the English alliance. "In com-
pliance with their custom," (the Major writes,) " I opened my business
in a set formal si)eech, which was interpreted by a one-eyed Chief who
understood English very well ; and they answered me with all that
deliberation, firmness, and seriousness peculiar to the Indians. All this
was done before dinner ; and it was well it happened so ; for after drink-
ing eighteen bottles of Claret I question whether they would have talked
as rationally as they did. I took especial care that each one had a full
plate continually. Soup, beef, turkey, beans, potatoes ; — no matter how
heterogeneous the mixture, it all went down. They seemed highly
pleased, and told me that Mr. Carleton had often sent them belts, and
made speeches to them, but had never dined with them." Mention is
made elsewhere of two quarts of molasses being provided for the Indians
between their meals.
DEARTH OF MILITARY STORES 29
Whenever the delegates at Philadelphia could snatch
half a day, or even half an hour, from the imperious
demands of current business, they reverted, with an
interest which never languished, to the discussion and
settlement of the Articles of Confederation. That
gigantic task occupied the spare moments of Congress
for nearly six years from the middle of 1775 onwards;
for it was nothing less than the construction, in all its
parts, of a national constitution which, according to the
expectation of its artificers, was to last during all time,
and to overspread the whole of the North American
Continent. Some schemes, very dear to the heart of
Congressmen, in the end miscarried ; and much of their
work was slipshod, but their rhetoric never. The loftiest
sentiments, on every conceivable opportunity, were set
forth to the world in impassioned phrases. A fragment
of vigorous declamation against the greed of the Ger-
man princes, and a really fine appeal to the natural
feelings of the German people, formed the Preamble to a
Resolution under which fifty acres of land were granted
to any private soldier who deserted from a foreign
regiment in British pay. The execution of this project
was committed to Benjamin Franklin, who speedily had
the eloquence of Congress translated into very plain and
intelligible German, and printed inside the covers of
parcels of tobacco, made up in imitation of those which
were sold across the counter of a rural store. Franklin
contrived that a number of these packets should fall into
the hands of General Von Heister's foragers ; and the
event showed that many a Hessian grenadier, as he
ruminated over his pipe, had dwelt lovingly on the
tempting offer which he found within the wrappers.
From January to June of the year 1777 men were
mustering and drilling in every township throughout the
States ; but their increasing numbers brought into
startling evidence the destitution of the Confederacy in
most of the indispensable necessaries of war. Before
hostilities commenced, the militia companies of some
30 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Colonies kept in store about as much ammunition as
was required for firing salutes on the King's birthday ;
and a year of sharp fighting had reduced the whole
country to one and the same low level of military
penury. In the summer of 1776 the New York Con-
vention was informed that there remained only twenty
hundred-weight of gunpowder in Albany County, and
that Tryon County was still worse provided. The
magazines in Virginia contained less than two tons of
lead and ball ; and the Cherokees were on the war-path
all along the frontier. Meanwhile the Revolutionary
government owned no powder-mills, and no shot-furnaces
or public laboratories ; and they had at their disposal a
very miserable supply of the raw material which was
essential for the purposes of warlike manufacture. But
their young country swarmed with ingenious and enter-
prising men, accustomed, in every department of life,
to produce tolerably adequate results from rude and
scanty means; — of whom some were ardent patriots,
and others eager for gain ; while the larger number,
without pretence at concealment, were actuated by a
combination of those two very powerful motives. In-
ventors and projectors were sure of obtaining a respect-
ful and intelligent hearing from the Secret Committee
of Congress, and from the Pennsylvanian Committee of
Safety ; both of which bodies entered upon their work
under the guidance of Benjamin Franklin, — that master
in the science of applying the study of natural philosophy
to everyday uses. Outside Philadelphia, however, the
authorities had still something to learn in practical
chemistry. The Massachusetts Assembly had agreed to
buy up all the saltpetre within their borders at a stated,
and unduly handsome, price; when '* a simple country-
man " brought them a specimen of his own domestic
manufacture, and promised that more could be made
in eight months than the province had money to pay
for. This native genius explained that the accumula-
tion of earth and refuse beneath an old barn, or disused
dwelling or out-house, was a mine of nitre for all who
DEARTH OF MILITARY STORES 31
knew how to work up the material by a short and cheap
method of treatment. These facts were already no
secret to the Pennsylvanian Committee, who, when the
war broke out, had summoned two competent persons
from each county throughout the State, taught them the
process, and sent them home to instruct their neigh-
bours. The administrators of every Northern colony,
before very long, had offers of more saltpetre than they
cared to purchase;^ and further South, — most fortu-
nately for a population which was not industrial, and
exceedingly bellicose, — the precious substance already
existed in the natural state. Beyond the Potomac, (so
it was officially reported,) there were " caverns of Salt-
petre, which had hitherto been wasted by salting meat."
People were soon making dams, and building races, on
the smaller rivers ; or converting the flour-mills into
powder-mills wherever the demand was exceptionally
urgent.^ Close attention was given to the quality, as
well as the quantity, of the finished product ; and in
Connecticut, particularly, manufacturers whose powder
carried short were recalled to good behaviour by the
very serious threat that their delinquencies would be
brought to the notice of Governor Trumbull.
Lead was yet more scarce than powder, and could
be procured only at heavy cost, and by painful sacri-
fices. The citizens of Philadelphia, in July 1776,
" spared the weights from their windows to be run
into ball ; " and the Pennsylvanian Committee of
Safety, — in full sympathy with a methodical and
punctual community which could ill dispense with
knowing the time of day, — ordered the construction of
moulds for the casting of clock-weights in iron, to be
^ " I was somewhat non-plussed to find that I was appointed, with
yourself, a Committee for purchasing Saltpetre manufactured within this
Colony. People are bringing saltpetre to me, and expect to be paid in
cash. I have bought fifty hundred-weight of one man, who made fourteen
pounds of it out of three bushels of earth." That was written by a citizen
of Goshen, in the State of New York.
2 " Proposals of Elisha Tyson, in Baltimore County, Maryland, eighteen
miles from Baltimore Town, and three from Joppa." American Archives^
32 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
exchanged with the inhabitants as substitutes for their
clock-weights of lead. Next went the water-spouts,
the ornaments on house-fronts, and the angels' heads
and heraldic shields at the top of the rain-pipes of the
more important family-mansions. All these objects
were honestly bought and paid for ; but in less scru-
pulous cities lead was taken without compensation, and
by a more summary procedure. The Sons of Liberty
in New York confiscated Tory cisterns, and stripped
Tory roofs ; and melted into bullets King George's
equestrian effigy, together with the founts of type
which Mr. James Rivington, as editor and owner of the
" Gazette," had so often used in defense of King
George's policy. As the war progressed, lead mines
were discovered and worked in American soil ; and a
brisk traffic in the metal was carried on with England
at the expense of what, in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, was among the most beautiful of
English arts. Dealers bought up, for surreptitious
exportation to the rebellious colonies, the graceful, soft-
featured leaden figures which then, in great profusion,
decorated the garden-terraces and the courtyards of
our country-houses. The i)rimitive and elementary
character of the difficulties with which the managers of
the American Revolution were condemned to grapple
is curiously illustrated by the dearth of so ordinary an
article as the paper required for the manufacture of
their cartridges. An edition of the German Bible,
unbound and in sheets, which formed part of the stock
in trade of a Loyalist printer in the suburbs of
Philadelphia, found its way into the cartouche-boxes of
Washington's infantry. There were parishes in which,
when a hostile incursion was supposed to be imminent,
the leaves of vestry-books, and other Church-records,
were used by the minute-men in the preparation of
their ammunition ; and local traditions of Bibles and
hymn-books being torn up for wadding are as gener-
ally prevalent throughout the States as the belief that
Oliver Cromwell's troopers littered their horses in the
DEARTH OF MILITARY STORES 33
aisle of the Cathedral is common in ancient English
cities. Requisitions for quires of paper, and pounds
of thread, poured in upon the Board of War from
the fighting armies, and were sometimes worded in
terms of passionate entreaty. America, (said Edmund
Burke,) loyal and docile in the hand of wise English
ministers, had formerly been governed ** by paper and
a little pack-thread." Downing Street, in an evil hour,
changed the policy of Sir Robert Walpole, and Mr.
Secretary Pitt, for more arbitrary theories of
colonial administration ; and paper and pack-thread
were now put to other, and less pacific, uses.
The practical American intellect fixed itself tena-
ciously on every point of prime consequence, however
humble and inglorious that point might appear in the
eyes of an administrator of the Old World, and of the old
school. Throughout the last half of the nineteenth
century the mechanism of fire-arms' continuously ex-
ercised the scientific faculties of all the leading na-
tions ; but in the eighteenth century the efficiency of
the musket depended mainly on the quality of the flint.
That commodity, at any rate, was of home-growth in
the colonies ; and there was no limit to the trouble
which Congressmen took in order to secure for their
troops the very best that ingenuity could discover.
The correspondence on this subject was for some
months considerable in bulk ; and information and
advice arrived in Philadelphia from many parts of the
Confederacy. In every district there were sportsmen
who went out shooting in all weathers ; who held a
decided opinion on the means of preventing missfires,
and of securing an instantaneous ignition of the charge ;
and who were not in the least afraid of telling their
mind freely to those men of their own class, and within
the circle of their own acquaintance, who for the time
being were governors of the country. Letters passed
to and fro, discussing the comparative merits of the red
flint, ''far exceeding anything imported from Europe;"
the green flint, which was '' harder than the common
VOL. IV. D
34 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
sort, and would fire oftener without sharpening ; " and
the yellow flint, wherewith, in prc-colonial days, the
aboriginal inhabitants had been wont to head their
arrows. Congress finally decided on the black flint,
usually found with lime-stone, " a prodigious fine vein "
of which was soon reported to exist in the neighbour-
hood of Ticonderoga. Thirty thousand specimens were
despatched to Washington's camp ; and the Republi-
can generals exerted infinite watchfulness, and some
severity, to ensure that the private soldiers did not
misuse the excellent article with which they had been
so providently furnished. The forethought and dili-
gence of the Revolutionary statesmen wore justified by
the result ; as their most obser\'ant adversaries, in all
ranks of the British army, emphatically acknowledged.
A very able and gallant field-officer of an luiglish line
regiment put on record his bitter regret that the valour
of his soldiers was so often " rendered vain by the
badness of a pebble-stone." He indignantly exclaimed
against a War Office which neglected to fit the musket
of battle with the black flint which a country gentle-
man in ICngland carried in the hammer of his fowling-
piece, and related how he had overheard British pri-
vates saying among themselves that a Yankee flint was
as good as a glass of grog.^
When all that native effort could accomplish had been
done for the equipment of the Continental regiments,
one want remained unsatisfied which Congress was
^ A Military Miscellany, by the Hon. Colonel Colin Lindsay of the
46th Rogiinent : Ix)n(lon, 1796. In a note to the passage (juoted Colonel
Lindsay says : •' It is now thirteen years since this was written, yet the
flints are as bad as ever."
Much that is interesting on this head is given in the fourth Chaj>ter
of The Private Soldier under Washington, by Charles Knowles Bolton ;
New York, 1902. A good American flint was supposed to fire sixty rounds
without needing to be re-sharpened ; which, according to Colonel Lindsay,
was just ten times the amount of service that could with any confidence
be expected from those used in European armies. It is worth remarking
that Colonel Hawker, in his celebrated and fascinating treatise on(juns
and Shooting, pronounces in favour of " the most transparent ol the
common black stones."
DEARTH OF MILITARY STORES 35
powerless to meet. In the summer of 1776 every re-
source was exhausted in order to arm the host which
Washington had gathered round him at New York ;
and the whole Confederacy was ransacked for guns,
amidst pitiful remonstrances from people who were
fondly attached to their weapons, and who in many cases
lived, exposed and defenceless, in daily and nightly ap-
prehension of an Indian onslaught. ^ The country had
been swept bare of muskets for the benefit of the army ;
and most of those muskets entirely disappeared in the
course of the six months of disastrous warfare which
commenced with the defeat on Long Island. Many of
the guns were hand-made, on varying patterns, by the
village blacksmiths ; and, when any of them happened
to be damaged on the march or in action, there was noth-
ing in store wherewith to replace the parts which had
been lost or broken.^ Several thousands of the best
firelocks were captured by the British at Fort Wash-
ington ; and each of the militiamen, who left for their
homes in crowds after the hard weather had once set in,
carried off his musket with him, for no better reason
than because he was loth to part with it. '* Nothing,"
wrote Washington in February 1777, "distresses me
more than the universal call that is upon me, from all
quarters, for fire-arms which I am totally unable to sup-
ply. The scandalous loss, waste, and private appropria-
tion, of public arms during the last campaign are beyond
all conception." The provincial assemblies set their local
tradesmen to work on the production of an article "as
1 Congress, all through July 1776, was bombarded with complaints
from the districts which had been stripped of their arms and ammunition.
" We have no suitable guns," said a North Carolinian, " for the defence
of our wives and our little ones, as we were obliged to furnish the army
with our best arms." "We could supply all Europe with gun-flints;"
(so a citizen of New Jersey wrote) ; '* but we want none of the flints here.
You may have them all; for we have no powder, which gives great un-
easiness to our people, as we expect an Indian war if our forces fail to
the Northward. I pray you would order us some powder, if it were but a
quarter of a pound each man. Now we have nothing but our sticks and
axes. "
2 The Private Soldier under [Vashington ; Chapter IV.
D2
36 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
near as could be had in imitation of the arms called
King's muskets ; " but the manufacturing capabilities
of America were limited, and contracts could seldom be
given out for more than a hundred weapons at a time.
Such fire-arms as might be bought in Europe were of
very poor quality. A customer, who is known to be in
difficulties, cannot hope to be served with the pick of
the market ; and the Committee of War at Philadelphia
was specifically cautioned ** not to trust to the ordinary
muskets of commerce, which were almost as dangerous
to friends as to enemies." ^
Weeks rolled on ; the weather mended ; the roads
hardened, and Washington was in hourly expectation of
hearing that Sir William Howe had begun to advance
along them ; and yet the American infantry was still
only half-armed with inferior weapons. But meanwhile
Silas Deane had been busy in Paris ; and his plan of
operations was settled, and pursued, in concert with Caron
de Beaumarchais, the most knowing and dexterous of
living Parisians. Certain armourers in the great French
cities were allowed to purchase from the Royal Arsenal
thirty thousand muskets of the model of 1763, at twenty-
three francs apiece ; and Louis the Sixteenth's min-
isters were perfectly well aware that these favoured
tradesmen did not buy the goods in order to dress their
shop-fronts. The whole consignment was after a while
on the high seas, packed beneath the hatches of three
merchantmen. One of their number was accounted for
by the British cruisers ; but, in the course of March
1777, a vessel sailed into the mouth of the Delaware
with eleven thousand stand of arms on board ; and an-
other, (which rumour had reported as lost,) unloaded " a
cargo of about twelve thousand fusees, and one thousand
barrels of powder," at Portsmouth in New Hampshire.
A share of the muskets was straightway allotted to
^ Letter to Franklin from Paris ; June 10, 1776. American Archives,
General Heath told Washington that some of the muskets purchased
by Massachusetts were scandalously bad. " Colonel Crafts," (he wrote,)
" informs me that of thirty-three which he proved, sixteen burst. I
suppose them to have been made for the Guinea Trade."
DEARTH OF MILITARY STORES 37
every State in proportion to the number of battalions
which it contributed to the national army ; and Wash-
ington expressed himself as ** put out of all further
uneasiness " with respect to as grave a cause for anxiety
as ever vexed a general.^
1 Washington to Governor Cooke of Rhode Island ; Morristown,
Aprils, 1777.
The foregoing account of the labours undertaken by Congress, and the
Provincial Assemblies, is based on materials gathered from very many
sources ; but the principal authority is the collection entitled The
Ajnerican Archives, Prepared and Published under an Act of Congress.
Those vast volumes include thousands of letters written in racy and un-
varnished style, and often by poorly educated men. The governments of
France and Germany testify to their pride in a Frederic or a Napoleon
by the minute official care with which the public correspondence of those
great military leaders and administrators has been preserved, arranged,
and elucidated. America, on her part, when engaged in the compilation
of her records, has given grateful recognition to the fact that the energy,
the homely ability, and the quiet patient courage, of countless obscure
citizens supplied the living force which carried her struggle for national
existence to a successful issue.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE FOREIGN OFFICERS. THE LOYALISTS. WASHINGTON
AT MORRISTOWN. MIDDLEBROOK
The military market in America had for some time
past been flooded with French exports of much more
questionable value than regulation muskets of a recent
pattern. Ever since July 1776 Silas Deane of Con-
necticut was established at Paris as the business agent
of the Revolutionary government. Deane had begun
life "in the usual New England way by keeping
school ; " he subsequently practised law, and made
money by trade ; and he had sat in Congress long
enough to be only too intimately acquainted with the
interior springs which moved the machine of adminis-
tration at Philadelphia. He was a man of striking
manners and good appearance, accustomed to live
generously and to entertain in a liberal style, and much
addicted to showy equipages and appointments ; but
he could not write French at all, nor speak it with any
fluency.^ Devoid of that all-essential accomplishment,
and endowed with those perilous social ambitions and
personal tastes, when left to himself in a foreign capital
he was the appointed prey of the charlatan and the
intriguer. He was a judge of firearms, and Beau-
marchais was always at hand to help him in procuring
them ; but, when it came to testing and selecting men,
his new French friend was a most unsafe guide. Deane
was open to flatterv, and too fond of the dinners and
suppers without which business then was seldom trans-
acted in Paris ;^ and he was totally incapable, by his
^ Wharton's Introduction to the Diplomatic Correspondence of the
Revolution ; Chapter XIII.
2 Letter from the Duke of Richmond to Edmund Burke, Esq. ; Paris,
Aug. 26, 1776.
38
FOREIGN OFFICERS
39
own unassisted observation, of noting the signs which
distinguish an adventurer from a man of honour.
Deane was soon surrounded by speculators and in-
ventors, and by soldiers of fortune whose rapacity
was shameless, and whose martial pretensions affected
officers of merit and experience with a feeling nothing
short of nausea. A famous chemist, encumbered with
a wife and four children, and loaded with clamorous
debts, who would not engage himself to pass over into
the New World until he had twenty thousand French
crowns to clear his property, and secure the future of
his family ; a person of title, formerly employed in the
Royal Manufactory of Arms, and now involved in a
troublesome lawsuit, who " had formed a plan for forc-
ing a passage through the cruisers of the English
marine, if the Colonies would advance him two or three
millions of francs for such a decisive object;" and two
Irish officers, of whom one had enjoyed unusual credit
and influence as aide-de-camp to a Marshal of France,
and the other, (a counterpart, apparently, in everything
except his nationality, of Robert Clive,) had beaten the
English in India while only a captain, — these were
specimens of the motley crew who presented themselves
to the notice of the American government as gentle-
men of the first rank and eminence in their respective
countries. The most prominent among them was a
Monsieur Ducoudray, the son of a wine-merchant in
Brittany, who had served, not very high up, as an
officer in the French artillery, but who appeared at
Philadelphia in the character of a Brigadier General,
and a noble of ancient birth. ^ He was armed with an
agreement, dictated by himself, and signed by Silas
1 Memoir of September 12, 1777, in the Appendix to the Fifth Chapter
of the Third Volume of Henri Doniol's Diplomatic Correspondence. This
Memoir was composed by a French officer, one of Lafayette's companions,
who never spells Ducoudray in the same way twice running ; as was nat-
ural in the case of a name not familiar to genuine members of the French
nobility. Washington, who had occasion to write that name much more
often thaji was agreeable to him, spells it as given in the text ; and his
version may be allowed to pass muster.
40 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Deane under the advice of Beaumarchais, in virtue of
which he claimed the rank of Major General in the
American army, and Commander-in-Chief of the Artil-
lery and Engineers ; with a staff consisting of an Adju-
tant, two aides-de-camp, and a secretary and designer;
thirty-six thousand francs a year of pay and allowances ;
and, when the war ended, a gratuity of three hundred
thousand francs, or a pension for life of half his emolu-
ments. Ducoudray further announced that he would
soon be followed across the sea by a hundred of his old
brother-ofificers. A first instalment had already arrived
in the persons of six captains and twelve lieutenants,
with brevet commissions from the French government
carrying a date which gave them seniority over every
native American of their own rank throughout the
entire Continental army.
John Adams spoke in grave disapprobation of
" Mr. Deanc's mad contract with Monsieur du Coudray
and his hundred officers." ^ These gentlemen, and their
fellows, belonged to a species very easily recognised by
students of the old Roman, and the Elisabethan, come-
dies. Pyrgopolinices and Thraso, Bobadil and Parolles,
might be seen, on any fine afternoon of May or June
1777, swaggering up and down Chestnut Street and
Market Street in dingy white uniforms, amidst the grow-
ing aversion and indignation of Philadelphia. Almost
all of them were loaded with debt ; and some had left
their own army in disgrace. The worst came from the
French colonies ; bearing letters of recommendation in
which they were introduced as officers with unblemished
reputations and splendid careers; "brave as their
swords ; in short, as mere Caesars, each of whom was
an invaluable acquisition to America."^ Those letters
1 Diary of John Adams for April 1778.
2 That is how Franklin described the style of these military testi-
monials. The Memoir by a French officer of September 12 is very
outspoken about the characters of French applicants for commissions in
the American army, and exceedingly severe upon those who recom-
mended them for employment.
FOREIGN OFFICERS
41
were signed by the Governors of Martinique and Guade-
loupe with a sense of profound relief and satisfaction ;
but their perusal evoked very different sentiments in
the breast of Washington. He already had suffered
much from the class of foreign officers who impose
themselves upon the credulity and inexperience of
a nation of civilians during the first few months of an
unexpected war. An American court-martial had re-
cently cashiered a certain Major Zedwitz who, (by his
own account,) fought under Frederic of Prussia in the
Seven Years' War, dined for five consecutive months at
Lord Granby's table, and was warmly urged by that
nobleman to accept a commission in the British Army.
But, all the same, while he was drawing pay from
Congress, he wrote letters in abominable English to
Governor Tryon and General Howe, asking them for
two thousand pounds in order to buy them information
about the strength of Washington's regiments ; ^ and
Washington's followers remembered the incident with
displeasure and disgust. The aspect and conduct of
the first batches of foreigners, who arrived from the
West Indian Islands, did nothing to remove that dis-
agreeable impression ; and years had still to elapse
before the heroism, the uprightness, and the soldierly
zeal and knowledge, of Lafayette and Duportail, of
Baron de Kalb and Baron Steuben, had earned the
universal and immutable esteem of American officers
for their French and German comrades.
1 "Three days ago General Washington Send for me, and I would
Translate a paper in good Hy German. The Contents are as follows.
The Continental Congress promises every man of the Hessian troops
wich Comes to this Armee 200 Akers of land and a Horse and a Kow ;
besides a heape of Scurilious Expressions against the King. On the 20th
I found four Fellows at the general's house, who proposed to spoil the
British watering-place. They brought along 14 bottles of Stuff as Black
as Ink. The general promised Every one ;,^iooo. Pleas to keep a good
look out. This is at present all I am abel with Truth to write." The
letter of Zedwitz, from which this passage is extracted, appears in the
American Archives for August, 1776. There is a reference to the matter
in Volume H., chapter 22, of Benson J. Lossing's Pictorial Field-book
of the Revolution.
42 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
At present, however, American military men of
every grade, and in all the States, were offended and
alarmed by the liberties which the American agent at
Paris had taken with their professional interests and
prospects. Many of them had raised their own com-
panies, and even their own battahons ; spending freely
out of their private means, and attending personally to
details of recruiting which in Europe devolved upon
the sergeants. They took pride in the consciousness
that, when the commissioned ranks of the Continental
army had been deliberately and unsparingly weeded of
the weaker and baser elements, they themselves were
judged worthy of being retained in the service of their
country. Twenty-five months of frequent conflict, and
constant hardship, had entitled them to the name of
veterans ; and now they were to be passed in the race
for promotion by strangers who could not give the word
of command in the only language which private soldiers
understood ; whose antecedents were often worse than
dubious ; and who, in the best of cases, had not been
under fire more often than themselves. " Without
derogating in the least from the character of the French
officers, there is strong reason to doubt whether they
have seen as much real service as our own in the course
of two campaigns." ^ That testimony was given by
George Washington ; the warm friend, and unsought
patron, of all brave and self-respecting men, of any
nationality, who drew sword for America.
Silas Deane, with ineffable folly, was at this time
scheming to get the Commander-in-Chief of the American
army superseded, and his functions transferred to the
Comte de Broglie, — a restless, and not very successful,
diplomatist, and a fifth-rate general. ^ Washington was
^ Washington to the President of Congress ; 6th June, 1777.
^ The Comte de Broglie was a younger brother of the famous Marshal.
In a letter of December 1776 he thus states the terms on which he
would consent to serve the American Confederacy. "You will content
yourself with stipulating for a military authority for the person in ques-
tion, who would unite the position of a General and President of the
FOREIGN OFFICERS
43
unaware of the plot, which would have troubled him
very little had it been brought to his knowledge ; and
he turned his attention to the rival claims of foreign
and native officers with no thought of self, and with
anxious consideration for the rights, and for the legiti-
mate susceptibilities, of others. During six months of
1777 that topic was the leading feature of his corre-
spondence. He appealed to the good sense and modera-
tion of any military men from Europe in whom he had
reason to think that those qualities existed ; he pleaded
the cause of his own countrymen respectfully, but most
firmly and pertinaciously, in his official communications
to the President of Congress ; he poured out his mind
more liberally and vigorously to personal friends, and
especially to Virginians, who had seats in that body;
and he steadfastly refused even to contemplate the idea
of throwing over Henry Knox for the sake of any
artillery-man in the world.^
At length the politicians had an opportunity of
learning how the soldiers felt on what was, before
everything, a military question. Reports reached camp
that Monsieur Ducoudray had been nominated Major
General, with a commission so antedated as to give him
seniority over every officer who had commanded a
brigade of guns, or a division of infantry, at Trenton.
Without waiting to ascertain how the fact stood, Greene,
Knox, and Sullivan simultaneously wrote to Congress
Council of War, with the title of Generalissimo, Field-Marshal, &c. Of
course large pecuniary considerations would have to be obtained for the
preparations for the journey, and for the journey itself; and a liberal
salary for the return home."
1 " Dear Sir, under the privilege of friendship, I take the liberty to
ask you what Congress expect I am to do with the many foreigners they
have at different times promoted to the rank of field-officers, and, (by the
last Resolve,) two to that of colonels ? These men have no attachment
nor ties to the country, further than interest binds them. They have no
influence, and are ignorant of the language they are to receive and
give orders in. Consequently great trouble, and much confusion, must
follow." George Washington to Richard Henry Lee, Morristown,
17 May, 1777; to Monsieur Malmedy, and to Major Colerus, May 16
and 19 ; and to the President of Congress, February 20, May 16, and
June 6, 1777.
44 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
requesting that, if the rumour proved correct, they
might have permission to retire from the army. Con-
gress, as it could not very well help doing, passed a
Resolution to the effect that the three letters constituted
an invasion of the liberties of the people, and an un-
justifiable attempt to influence the decisions of the
people's representatives. But the warning had not
been thrown away ; and, after guarding their dignity
by a long and grave debate, the delegates at Philadelphia
voted that it was inexpedient to ratify the treaty into
which Mr. Deane had entered with Monsieur Ducoudray
and his hundred officers.^ Willing to soften the blow,
Congress proposed to appoint Ducoudray Inspector
General of the American army ; but he had the spirit
to decline an office which, under the circumstances,
could be nothing beyond an empty title, and announced
his intention of going to the front in the character of a
volunteer. The end of his story, which was not long
in coming, is told in a letter written by Baron de Kalb
to the Comte de Broglie. " Monsieur de Coudray has
just put the Congress much at ease by his death. He
was going to join the army on the sixteenth September.
Crossing a ferry over the Schuylkill River he did not
choose to dismount, and, wishing to correct his too
mettlesome animal, the horse jumped into the stream,
and he was drowned like a schoolboy. The officers of
his suite, conducting themselves with arrogance, and
indulging in scandal, will, I think, be dismissed dis-
contented." It was a dispensation, (said John Adams,)
which would save a good deal of quarrelling. The
fate of poor Ducoudray ranks with the capture of
Charles Lee as one of the mercies which befell the
American Republic in the outward semblance of a
startling and unforeseen calamity.^
1 Note to a letter of July 12, 1777, in the Writings of George
Washington.
^ Ducoudray's death is related in Adams's Diary for the i8th Septem-
ber 1777; in De Kalb's letter to Broglie ; and in the closing paragraph
of the sixth chapter of Doniol's second volume.
THE LOYALISTS 45
During the long period of anticipation which inter-
vened between the two campaigns there was everywhere
a sense of extraordinary excitement in the air. Both
political parties instinctively felt that a paramount crisis
was at hand ; and both political parties were confident
that their own side would win. The Loyalists in the
Eastern and Central States showed themselves eager
and busy, although their activity was productive of
satisfaction to themselves rather than of solid advantage
to their cause. They cut down Liberty Poles; they
talked of blowing up powder mills ; and in the upland
districts of New York State they marched about after
nightfall with guns and pistols, ate a great deal of
porridge and butter-milk at Tory farmhouses, shot a
lieutenant through the arm, and ran away as soon as
they came in contact with a detachment of Governor
Clinton's militiamen.^ They treated with contempt,
(and none can blame them,) the edicts of Congress
which fixed the price of goods and gave a forced
currency to Government paper. "Tory customers,"
(we are told,) '' with a hankering after the East Indian
herb, would pay nine or ten shillings a pound for any-
thing which resembled it in smell or taste." Some
sound Whigs, who went marketing with a handful of
Continental dollar notes, had their money refused by
a Tory tradesman ; while they themselves were ejected
from the shop as " good-for-nothing rascals," and were
informed that, if they wanted redress, they might carry
1 Public Papers of George Clinton, with an Introduction by Hugh
Hastings, State Historian of the State of New York: Volume I.; docu-
ments relating to April and May, 1777.
Some of the instances quoted in these paragraphs refer to the months
that preceded Trenton. Towards the end of the war an advertisement
appeared in the newspapers informing the gentlemen who, on the 17th of
September 1776, supped at the late widow de la Montaigne's after taking
down the Liberty Pole, that the bill for their supper, and their liquor,
still remained undischarged ; and that they would do well " to sell the iron
that was about the pole, and pay their bill, as otherwise the names of all
those who supped on that occasion would be published for the informa-
tion of American citizens."
46 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
their grievance to the Committee of Public Safety.^
A company of gentlemen at Albany dined together
on the Fourth of June, and drank Happy Returns to
King George, instead of waiting till that day month,
and drinking Long Life to the new-born Republic.
Loyalists in Massachusetts ** showed all possible friend-
ship to the Highland officers who had been captured,
and allowed their own brave countrymen to be styled
rebels at table without animadverting on the indecency."
In South Carolina, when the savages spread desolation
all along the frontier, and killed a great number of
the white inhabitants, it became matter of common
knowledge that " the disaffected party had been aware
beforehand of the intentions of the Indians, and were
elated by the prospect ;" and Loyalist partisans missed
no opportunity of instilling an apprehension of British
vengeance into the minds of timid citizens, or of
flattering the Royal officials in New York with exag-
gerated accounts of the poverty and distress that pre-
vailed in the American army.
These vexatious, but for the most part not very for-
midable, manifestations of hostihty at first roused per-
turbation and alarm in those against whom they were
directed. The whole country-side was in a panic when
some Tory guerillas, who infested the New York high-
lands, intercepted one of Charles Lee's orderlies, and
destroyed his despatches ; as a consequence of which
exploit much fine writing, and impudent self-glorifica-
tion, have been irrecoverably lost to posterity. The
State Government was besieged with urgent, and emo-
tionally worded, demands that light horsemen should be
told off to patrol the roads, and chastise the villains
who insulted the friends of liberty, and assisted her
enemies in their rapine. But the Revolutionary au-
thorities soon recovered their self-possession ; and, when
it was necessary to punish, they acted without precipi-
tation, and in reasonable obedience to the dictates of
^ Complaint of Zachariah Sickles to the New York Committee.
THE LOYALISTS 47
humanity.^ Armed insurrection was suppressed with
rigour; (for Governor Clinton was no sentimentalist;)
but little encouragement was shown in high quarters
to querulous and gossiping accusations against quiet
people who did not wish well to the Republic. Trivial
instances of the sort of conduct which, in the days
of the great French Revolution, was known as ** inciv-
ism," were left to the extemporised jurisdiction of angry
neighbours; and their methods of proceeding, though
sometimes inexcusably harsh and rough, were not un-
frequently tempered by fellow-feeling, or by a dash of
intentional or unconscious humour.^ In more serious
cases the offender was held to bail ; and he would often
be confined on parole within the precincts of a county-
town. The inconveniences and privations incidental to
this modified form of incarceration were greatly miti-
gated for certain prominent Loyalists who had kept
open house before the Revolution, and whose former
hospitality was remembered and repaid, when their day
of trouble came, by influential members of the opposite
party. The comforts enjoyed by this class of prisoners
might well have aroused the envy of many among their
captors. A letter is extant in which Washington re-
quested the Board of War that the Loyalists, who were
detained on parole, might not be quartered within any
district which was occupied by his army ; as he did not
wish them to see with their own eyes the wretched
condition of the Continental soldiers.
The most notable of these prisoners was the natural
son of Benjamin Franklin, who often had occasion to
1 When heads of families were committed to prison, orders were issued
" to pay particular attention to their wives and children, and to see that
they did not want the common necessaries of life."
'"^ A youth in a New York township, who had broken into the magazine,
and stolen some of the public ammunition, was sentenced by the local
committee to be confined to his father's farm for the space of one year.
He was allowed to be present at " public worship on Sabbath days, and
to attend funerals upon extraordinary occasions." An unlucky politician,
who drank to the King's success, was taken to the guard-house, where
the soldiers knocked the end out of a hogshead, and forced him to " dance
Yankee Doodle in it until the next day."
48 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
repeat to himself the passage from '* King Lear " about
the justice of the gods in relation to men's pleasant
vices ; for the graceless Edmund in the tragedy was not
the object of higher hopes, or the source of keener
disappointment, to the sire who begot him, than was
WilUam Franklin, the royal Governor of New Jersey.
**Will," (so his father wrote in the year 1749,) "is
a tall proper youth, and much of a beau. He acquired
a habit of idleness on the Expedition, but begins of late
to apply himself to business, and I hope will become
an industrious man." ^ The youth travelled rapidly
towards success along paths which were made smooth
and short by his father's well-established influence,
and consummate knowledge of the world. He became
Postmaster at Philadelphia, and Clerk of the House of
Assembly of Pennsylvania; and in 1757 he accom-
panied Benjamin Franklin on a visit to England, where
he passed for " one of the prettiest young gentlemen "
that ever came over from America.^ By this time
WilHam Franklin had learned to play his own hand
of cards, for a stake which suited his own fancy. He
contrived to make the acquaintance, and to win the
favour, of no less a patron than Lord Bute ; and in the
year 1763 he was made Governor of New Jersey at
the early age of thirty-two. The colony did not take his
appointment as a compHmcnt to itself ; for the Whigs
regarded him as a time-server and a courtier, and the
Tories would not allow that he was a gentleman.^
None the less he remained a sincere and vehement
^ The " Expedition " was a military operation undertaken against
the French in Canada, where the lad served with credit as a Captain of
volunteers.
2 Letter from William Strahan to Mrs. Franklin ; London, 13 Decem-
ber 1757.
^ John Penn, who was in England when Franklin obtained his Governor-
ship, wrote out that the business had been managed so privately as to allow
*' no opportunity of doing one single thing that might put a stop to this
shameful affair. . . . What a dishonour and a disgrace it must be to a
country to have such a man at the head of it, and to sit down contented !
If any gentleman had been appointed, it would have been a different
case."
THE LOYALISTS 49
Tory ; and all through the earlier stages of the
American Revolution he was in hot quarrel with his
Provincial Assembly.
After the Declaration of Independence New Jersey
adopted a political constitution framed on popular
lines. General Livingston was chosen Governor ; and
William Franklin was put under arrest, pronounced
a virulent enemy to the country, and ordered to be
confined where, and how, the Continental Congress
might direct. He was, however, permitted to choose
his own place of sojourn ; and he fixed upon a town in
Connecticut, where he led a free and jovial existence,
giving tea-parties to ladies of the neighbourhood, and
treating his male fellow-captives to more potent, and
much more treacherous, beverages. Towards the end
of November, 1776, the constables deposed that in the
night season, between Saturday and Sunday, there
was hallooing and shouting at Governor Franklin's
lodging, the company roaring out a catch about
"King George's health, and it shall go round," and
a song with a chorus to the effect that Howe was
a brave commander. The noise, "which might be
heard forty rods off," brought in the watch ; and there
ensued the sort of conversation which, at that hour of
the night, and under those circumstances, passes for
a political argument. Franklin and his friends called
the American soldiers cowards ; cursed the colony, and
those who governed it ; prayed that the Hessians might
soon be there to cut all their throats ; " and uttered
the most terrible oaths ever heard, introduced into
almost every sentence. Mr. Burlington, when remon-
strated with, said it was no sin to take God's name in
vain, and told John Hall that he could not get to
Heaven," inasmuch as he had nothing but Continental
paper money with which to pay the expenses of the
journey. Blows followed words ; and in the end the
whole party were marched off to the guard-room.
Those were not New England manners ; and, of all New
Englanders, they were least to the taste of Jonathan
VOL. IV. fi
50 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Trumbull. A memorial has been preserved, — addressed
to the Governor of Connecticut, and signed, (among
other names,) by Samuel Burlington, — a portion of
which reads as follows : ** We beg to acquaint your
Honour that we do not pretend to justify our conduct;
but your Honour may rest assured that whatever im-
proprieties happened on that night were occasioned by
our being in Hquor, and not with any design of offending
your Honour, or any of the gentlemen in authority." ^
These numerous, but desultory and objectless, ebul-
litions of Loyalist sentiment had inspired Sir William
Howe with expectations which never were fulfilled. He
was encompassed in New York by a social atmosphere
most unfavourable to the formation of a correct judg-
ment. The city was thronged by Royal officials ex-
pelled from their seats of administration; by New Eng-
land merchants and country gentlemen who had been
despoiled of their property, and who dared not revisit
their homes ; by Tory clergymen who had been rabbled
by their congregations, and Tory authors whose circle
of readers cared for nothing except highly spiced satires
upon the iniquities and vulgarities of Congress. These
men contemplated the situation through the distorting
medium of intense, and in many cases justifiable, re-
sentment; and they all of them cherished those fond
hallucinations which cheer and misguide the political
exile ; — for exiles they already were, even though the
sea did not flow between themselves and their birthplace.
They were the informants and advisers of the British
Commander-in-Chief, and too often his flatterers and
boon-companions ; for his course of life was such as
the most estimable of the Loyalists watched with regret
and disapproval. Sir William Howe had been brought
to believe that a spirit of impatience with the Revolution
prevailed far and wide throughout the Confederacy;
and the Ministers in London expressed their pleasure
^ Sabine's American Loyalists. The Works of Benjamin Franklin^
edited by Jared Sparks. American Archives for June, November, and
December, 1776.
THE LOYALISTS 5I
at hearing from him " that the rage of rebellion of late
had considerably abated," and that the affection of
the people was visibly reverting towards the King's
Government.^
In an armed contest, when force rules the hour,
political inclinations are of small account unless they
lead to martial action ; and Royalism to the North of
the Potomac River, for any practical military purpose,
was a barren and unfruitful creed. Further to the
Southward the case was very different indeed ; as time
was soon to show. The local Tories of Georgia and
the Carolinas, — numerous, hardy, habituated to arms,
devoted to their cause, and implacable against its
adversaries, — during several fiercely disputed cam-
paigns made the war their own; but Loyalists in the
Northern and Central States were for the most part
content with leaving the King's troops to fight the
King's battles. Oliver de Lancey of New York possessed
an extensive influence, and a well deserved popularity,
throughout his native province. During the late F'rench
war he had stated, and almost unquestionably with truth,
that, if he were placed in command of the New York
contingent, he would undertake to enlist in ten days the
whole quota of the troops allotted to that colony. In
the autumn of 1776 de Lancey was appointed a Bri-
gadier General in the Royal service. He promised that,
in the following Spring, he would bring into the field
fifteen hundred Loyalists ; but not six hundred of them
were forthcoming when the army marched.^ The force
which Howe took with him on his expedition against
Philadelphia, (an enterprise which demanded every
trained soldier that he could muster,) comprised only
three minute detachments of native American infantry.
That meagre outcome of Royalist effort and enthu-
siasm was in sorry contrast to the sixteen thousand
^ Letter in reply to Sir William Howe from John Robinson, Secre-
tary of the Treasury ; March 5,1777. Report of American Manuscripts
in the Royal Institution of Great Britain\ Vol. I.
^ Sabine's American Loyalists^ Vol. I., page 364.
B8
52 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
New Englanders who in April 1775, within forty-eight
hours after the first shot' had been fired, stood in array-
outside the fortifications of Boston ; or to the host of
armed farmers who, of their own accord and at their
own charges, trooped in from far and near to oppose
Burgoyne at Saratoga. Lexington, and Bennington, —
and other spirited encounters which are forgotten by
Europe, but are still well remembered in America, —
were fought, on the side of the Revolution, by a force
which may not unfairly be described as the posse comi-
tatus of the neighbouring districts : whereas the only
success of any importance which stands to the credit of
the Northern Loyalists, as apart from the British regu-
lars, was the battle of Oriskany in the Mohawk valley ;
and more than half the Loyalists there present, and
those by no means the least forward in the melee, were
painted Indians. The trumpery character of the Tory
demonstrations against the Revolutionary authorities in
rebellious States, and the ease with which those demon-
strations were suppressed, profoundly disappointed the
hopes of the British Cabinet ; and British veterans
sorrowfully counted the handful of Americans who
were attracted by the secure pay, and the smart uni-
form, of the Royal service, as compared with the tens
of thousands of recruits who did not shrink from the
starvation, and the threadbare misery, which awaited
them in the Continental army. Military men look to
military results ; and the best English officers, naturally
and pardonably, declined to believe in the single-mind-
edness of partisans who would not strike a blow for
their convictions. That opinion found expression in the
words of a distinguished soldier who already had
acquired the esteem, and was destined ere long to enjoy
the personal regard and friendship, of his Sovereign.
" I shall now," Colonel Harcourt wrote, " conclude with
a few remarks, which I think the very little experience
I have already had in this war sufficiently authorises
me to make. The first is that, however Government
may have been flattered by the representations of a few
WASHINGTON AT MORRISTOWN 53
interested individuals, you may depend upon it, as a
fact, that we have not met with ten, I believe I might
say two, disinterested friends to the supremacy of Great
Britain."!
Washington's prolonged stay at Morristown was some-
thing of an oasis in the desert of his severe existence.
Two years of perpetual labour, the last six months of
which were passed amidst frightful hardships, and anxi-
ety very near akin to despair, had not been endured
with impunity. Before the close of winter he was in
low health, and those most immediately about him
feared lest he might not have the strength to rally. It
was then that he took the Com.munion with the Presby-
terians.^ **The service," (so the homely record runs,)
**was held in the rear of the parsonage on Morris
Street. The congregation, wrapped in th^ir heaviest
clothing, with no roof above them but the winter sky,
gathered about their pastor, having cheerfully relin-
quished their church to the suffering soldiers." Wash-
ington had forbidden his wife to join him in camp, as
the movements of his army were uncertain, and his
lodgings rough and crowded ; but, when Mrs. Washing-
ton learned that her husband was ill, she resolved
within herself that the question was one for her, and not
for him, to settle.^ On the fifteenth of March she arrived
at Morristown, and the newspapers were soon able to
report that his Excellency was now perfectly recovered,
and had in addition the satisfaction of his amiable lady's
company. The weather improved ; that northern cor-
ner of New Jersey was a land of plenty ; and Morris-
^ Letter from Colonel the Honourable William Harcourt to his father.
Earl Harcourt : New Brunswick, March 17th, 1777.
2 The story is related in an earlier volume of this history.
^ Mrs. Washington had foreseen that the risk of small-pox in a military
camp might be employed as a reason for keeping her from the General's
side when her presence was most needed. She accordingly got herself
inoculated soon after the war began, and went through the illness with no
injurious effect on her strength or beauty.
54 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
town stood high, safe, and pleasant, on a table-land, with
steep slopes, which commanded a wide prospect over a
beautiful rolling country.^ During those years of
trouble many important Whig families from the Central
States had sought sanctuary among the hills, where
they formed a large and friendly circle, with money and
leisure to spare, and of one mind in poUtics. Lady
Washington, (as the others, when speaking among
themselves, respectfully called her,) at once set the tone,
and gave an example of the personal habits which were
thenceforward to prevail in good American society until
the war was over, and the country had emerged from
peril. The ladies who first paid her a visit of ceremony,
in their " best bibs and bands, and most elegant silks
and ruffles," found her in a plain brown dress, and a
check apron. " She received us," said one of the party,
" very graciously and easily ; but, after the compliments
were over, she resumed her knitting. There we were
without a stitch of work, and sitting in state ; but General
Washington's lady was knitting stockings for herself
and husband." 2 From that day onward no hands were
idle ; fine clothes disappeared from use ; sewing and
knitting clubs were organised for the benefit of the
army ; and in some kitchens, well known to the younger
soldiers, the meal-bags were always open, and the soup
simmering on the fire.
The way of life in Washington's household was
simple in the extreme, but not austere, and the very
reverse of silent ; for he loved to surround himself with
young people who talked their own talk, and amused
themselves in their own fashion. The three beautiful
^ A Virginian lady, who spent that winter at Morristown, speaks of it
as " a clever little village whose three spires would make it seem preten-
tious." The churches were hospitals ; the larger buildings had been
converted into magazines ; and the troops lived in log huts. Washing-
ton's own domicile was a house of public entertainment, which fronted
the village-green, and, (like a typical American tavern,) was kept by a
Colonel.
2 Life of Martha Washington, by Anne HoUingsworth Wharton ;
Chapter VII.
WASHINGTON AT MORRISTOWN 55
daughters of Governor Livingston resided with their
aunt Lady Stirling, and their cousin Lady Kitty Duer,
in a fine old Manor-house not far from Morristown ;
and there was no dearth of wit and gallantry among
the young fellows who, with Alexander Hamilton as
their leading spirit, were members of what, in the mili-
tary parlance of the day, was known as the General's
family.^ The troop of girls, with a due proportion of
aides-de-camp, attended the Washingtons " on their horse-
back parties," during which the General kept his eyes
open ; for, like Wellington in Spain, he always studied
his theatre of operations from the saddle. A spacious
room in the Commissariat store-house was reserved for
dancing, and for the meetings of a Masonic Lodge, at
which the Commander-in-Chief was often present, and
where he conferred the degrees of the Order upon his
companions in arms. These pastimes and festivities,
though heartily enjoyed, were of Sparta rather than of
Capua. The entire cost, during four and a half months,
of maintaining the Headquarters Staff, and of exercising
the hospitalities obligatory upon the general of a very
hungry army, amounted to less than five hundred
pounds ; and even this modest outlay, in the view of
Washington, required a special note stating, in his own
hand-writing, that all the separate items were recorded
for the examination of Congress.
Small-pox was then the scourge of camp-life, and
not unfrequently obtruded itself, at an awkward
moment, as a most disturbing factor in the calculations
of a strategist. In June 1776, when the British armada
was expected in New York Bay, and not a man could
be spared from duty, Washington had combated and
controlled the malady by systematic and rigorous isola-
^ Captain Graydon, of Philadelphia, visited Morristown, and was
invited by Washington to dinner, where he met the Miss Livingstons.
Colonel Hamilton presided at the General's table, and kept the company
alive; and in the evening the young people assembled again at a tea-
party. Now that all question of a Royal custom-duty was past and
gone, tea was again beginning to be served in Whig houses.
$6 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
tion of the small-pox patients.^ The conditions of time
and place now seemed favourable for the adoption of a
more thorough and sure remedy, which was, however,
by no means exempt from risk ; for it seemed quite
within the chances that Sir WiUiam Howe might
advance in force during some week when half the
American rank and file were incapacitated by the results
of inoculation. But in the estimation of Washington
the probability, or even the possibility, of seeing his
army ruined by a horrible disease, at the very turning-
point of a campaign, Hke the army of poor General
Thomas in Canada, was more alarming still ; and of the
two dangers he chose the least. Early in February
1777 he informed Governor Trumbull that the impracti-
cability of keeping the small-pox from spreading in the
natural way had determined him, upon the most mature
deliberation, to inoculate all the new troops that had
not had the disorder.
The measure was popular among soldiers, and in
the homes whence soldiers came ; ^ and the miUtary
authorities lost no opportunity of recommending it to
public confidence. The army was carefully informed
that, when the process was tried at West Point in the
New York Highlands, only four cases out of five
hundred had ended fatally ; and there had been nights
when the parole, and the countersign, issued to the
American sentries were the words, " Inoculation " and
" Health." ^ Washington gave the order ; the surgeons
at Morristown, as soon as permission was accorded, fell
to work with a will ; the Presbyterian and Baptist
churches, which had been made over to them for
infirmaries, were filled and emptied several times in
1 American Archives of June 1776.
2 "The women of all this district, as far as Boston and New York,
are slender and straight. They have a very white skin, and a healthy
colour in their faces, without having to paint. Hardly any of those I
have seen are pitted with small-pox ; but then inoculation has been
common here for many years." Letter from a German Officer in Bur-
goyne's army, quoted in Lowell's Hessians.
^ The Private Soldier under Washiyigton ; Chapter VI.
MIDDLEBROOK 57
succession; and the streets of the village were soon
thronged by a multitude of cheerful, and very for-
midable, convalescents. Washington had acted under
sound advice, and his injunctions were carried into
effect by enthusiastic and very capable agents ; for
his army-doctors loved their profession, and already
gave earnest of the scientific ingenuity, and manual
skill, for which the physicians and surgeons of their
nation have long been celebrated. Too few in number ;
scantily provided with the commonest hospital neces-
saries ; and sometimes, (in those days of interrupted
commerce,) absolutely destitute of the drugs which were
in ordinary use, they fought their uphill battle cleverly,
and on the whole victoriously.^ Some years after this
date their merit was discerned by no less a competent
judge than Baron Larrey, who, as Head Surgeon in
the Imperial Guard during all Napoleon's wars, most
assuredly enjoyed unique opportunities for perfecting
himself in the practice of his art ; and who was in the
habit of drawing very accurate comparisons between
the surgical proficiency of his own, and other, countries.
Toward the commencement of his career he had served
in America, when the armies of Rochambeau and
Washington lay in camp together. Larrey then formed,
and late in life he placed on evidence, a high opinion
of the American surgeons, who were ** very bold in
amputations, and who saved many more of their
wounded than the French, although they had a less
well-situated Hospital." ^
The Americans, much to their advantage, were an
1 In July 1776 the Medical Department of the American army adver-
tised for a large quantity of dry herbs for baths and fomentations, par-
ticularly balm, hyssop, wormwood, and mallows. " Good people at a
distance" were prayed to collect and cure herbs. It was customary to
prepare the system for inoculation by doses of calomel ; as a substitute
for which the doctors at W^est Point were fain to use "an extract of
butternut, made by boiling down the inner bark of the tree."
'^ Memoirs of Military Surgery^ by Baron Larrey, First Surgeon of the
Guard, Knight of the Iron Crown, and Commander of the Legion of
Honour.
58 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
eminently practical-minded people; but it cannot be
denied that, in their relation to military life, they
carried that valuable quality to a perilous excess.
They turned out to fight, readily enough, when a battle
was imminent ; but to remain in camp between-whiles
was in their eyes nothing better than a deplorable
waste of time which might very easily be put to more
remunerative uses. That was Washington's standing
difficulty ; and he seldom experienced it in an acuter
form than during the Spring of 1777. February,
March, and April passed away ; but the State govern-
ments still kept back from the front their newly-raised
battalions of regular infantry ; and the militia, with
more excuse, refused to abandon their private avoca-
tions, and remained tranquilly at home. A Pennsyl-
vanian officer captured at Fort Washington, and subse-
quently released on parole, paid a visit to his former
comrades in their cantonments at Morristown. '* I had
been extremely anxious," he wrote, "to see our army.
Here it was ; but I could see nothing that deserved the
name. I was told, indeed, that it was much weakened
by detachments ; and I was glad to find that there was
some cause for the present paucity of soldiers. I could
not doubt, however, that things were going well. The
Commander-in-Chief, and all about him, were in excel-
lent spirits."
Washington himself might well be hopeful ; for he
had devised, and carefully matured, a plan of opera-
tions based upon an intimate acquaintance with the
idiosyncrasies of his countrymen. Before the end of
May he sent his wife back to Mount Vernon, made a
long day's march to the southward, and planted his
army within a few miles of New Brunswick, the
westernmost of the British garrisons. He had selected
a very strong position. A range of heights, steep on
the side towards his enemy, sloped gently rearwards
into a well-watered valley where a much larger army
than his might have encamped under cover from
cannon-shot, and amidst abundant pasturage for their
MIDDLEBROOK 59
horses. Below the hills stood the village of Middle-
brook, which was aptly named ; for the Raritan flowed
deep and swift along its front, and a stream, encased
in ravines, protected it on either flank. " Our right,'
so Washington wrote, *'is our most accessible and
weakest part ; but two or three redoubts will render it
as secure as could be wished ; " and he wished, (and
moreover he was fully determined,) that on right, left,
and centre, his lines should be nothing short of
impregnable.^ Statesman and soldier that he was, he
had placed himself in close proximity to the English
for carefully considered reasons of high policy. He
purposed, by sounding the alarm of war, to rouse
his country from its false security ; to quicken the
remissness of the Provincial governments ; and to
replenish his army with fresh regiments which, when
once they were under his hand, he would take very
good care never to let go until the campaign was
finally decided. And, again, he was convinced that Sir
William Howe would not venture to advance against
Philadelphia through the Jerseys, and across the
Delaware, leaving behind him a powerful and enter-
prising adversary planted close up against his line of
communication with New York city. Washington felt
assured that, by this manoeuvre, he would impose a
passive attitude upon his opponents ; and he purposed,
**in the meantime, by light bodies of militia counte-
nanced by a few Continental troops, to harass them,
and weaken their numbers by continual skirmishes."
So he explained himself to Benedict Arnold, in a letter
marked by the confidential freedom which one master
of an art employs when writing to another. That was
the much lauded Fabian policy, which had not been
invented by Washington, nor by Fabius either; for
it is the course pursued, in every age and country,
by military commanders, of solid judgment and firm
^ All the places mentioned in this Section may be found in a map at
the end of this volume, — which, like those preceding it, has been adapted
from the Atlas to Marshall's Life of IVashingion ; Philadelphia, 1807.
60 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
character, against a foe who for the time being is too
strong to be successfully grappled with in ranged battle.
The game had now been opened by Washington ;
the next move fell to Sir William Howe ; and he took
it with even more than his wonted dilatoriness. On
the thirteenth of June he transferred his army to the
southern bank of the Raritan, by means of pontoons
which had been sent out from England half a year too
late ; for, if they had been supplied in time. Lord Corn-
wallis would without fail have captured Philadelphia
in the second week of the previous December. The
British were twice as many as their adversaries ; and
better troops had seldom filed across a bridge in more
ardent quest of an enemy. ** The veteran officers,"
(said an American historian,) " alike German and
English, agreed that they had never seen such a body
of men. Every soldier was eager for a battle." The
long line of Royal brigades took up their ground
between Somerset Court House on the left, and Middle-
bush on the right. ^ A Major of Engineers, on whose
opinion Howe implicitly relied, was commissioned to
reconnoitre the hostile position ; and he reported that
an attempt to storm it would result in certain disaster to
the assailants.^ As Washington had already been at
Middlebrook for more than a fortnight, it is difficult to
understand why Sir William had not taken measures
for obtaining this information earlier. If he had been
as fond of riding as his opponent,^ he would long ere
this have sallied out from New York attended by a
troop of Colonel Harcourt's dragoons, and have looked
into matters through his own telescope ; instead of
bringing many thousand fine infantry, and a long train
of guns, as his escort on an expedition which, if the
^ Bancroft's Revolution : Epoch Fourth, Chapter 20.
2 Jones's History of New York : Volume I., Chapter 9.
^ Washington, who wrote only one letter to Congress during the week
that Howe lay before Middlebrook, explained his silence by assuring the
President that he had been " almost constantly on horseback."
MIDDLEBROOK 6l
right name has to be found for it, most assuredly cannot
be termed a wise man's errand.
The British commander henceforward relinquished
the notion of approaching Philadelphia by land ; if,
indeed, he had seriously entertained it. Nothing now
remained for him except to retrace his steps ; but Sir
William Howe was constitutionally averse to taking a
resolution, and above all an unpleasant resolution,
quickly. To the surprise and amusement of the
American officers who were surveying him from across
the Raritan, he placidly and deliberately began to
intrench his camp, as if he had come into their neigh-
bourhood to spend a quiet summer. He soon, how-
ever, became conscious that, if an aggressive strategy
was hazardous, there was danger likewise in delay and
inaction ; for he had much to lose, and nothing what-
ever to gain, by lingering in the position where he at
present lay. He had collected, and led into the field,
every soldier whom he could venture to withdraw from
the garrisons of Newport, of Long Island, and of New
York city ; and there were no reinforcements to follow.
Washington's power, on the contrary, increased daily,
and almost hourly. General Putnam despatched from
Peekskill, in the Northern Highlands, a large force of
Continental infantry, and pushed them down towards
Middlebrook in three detachments, with an interval
of one day's march between each column. Benedict
Arnold had been summoned from Connecticut to make
good the crossings of the Delaware River against the
invader, and to assume the general military charge of
Pennsylvania. Proud of serving under the orders of so
redoubtable a fighting man, the State militia turned out
in great force, expensively equipped, and all the more
useful as soldiers on account of their recent experience
of war in the short and sharp winter campaign of
Princeton.
The ministry in London had convinced themselves
that the loyalty, or at all events the timidity, of the
New Jersey people would revive when the Royal troops
62 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
were again quartered in their midst; but the hope
proved delusive. The Jerseys, in the course of one
and the same twelvemonth, had been occupied in
turns by each of the hostile armies ; and they had
learned to appreciate the difference between Americans
who were kept within the bounds of duty by General
Washington, and Germans who were left to their own
devices by General Howe. Their militia battalions in
the Revolutionary camp were at once brought up to
their full strength ; and the bands of armed and
mounted farmers, — which, ever since the Hessian
ravages, had been the military speciality of New
Jersey, — hovered in flank and rear of Howe's army ;
swooped down upon his convoys ; and terrorised into
an enforced neutrality that small, and diminishing,
section of Tories who had not as yet torn up the British
protection-papers, and taken the oath of allegiance to
the United States. Washington infused additional
vitality into the proceedings of the Jerseymen by send-
ing to their assistance Colonel Daniel Morgan, and his
Virginian Rangers, who knew the wiles of the forest,
and could hit a silver dollar, (if such a coin still existed
within the American camp,) at a measured distance of
sixty yards. ^ Regulars and militia, riflemen from
the frontier, and country-folk with their fowling-pieces
and powder-horns, — they all displayed an alacrity
which affected Washington with very novel, and most
comforting, sensations. His letters during the last
fortnight of that June were closely packed with urgent
business ; and yet he often found space in his paper for
a hearty tribute to the patriotism of his countrymen.
** It is a happy circumstance," (so he wrote to Arnold,)
" that such an animation prevails among the people.
It will inspire the people themselves with confidence in
1 In the Commander-in-Chief's letter of instructions to Morgan there
occurs a paragraph suggesting that the Colonel should dres? one or two of
his companies " in the Indian style, and let them make the attack with
yelling and screaming, as the Indians do." The idea, which was hardly
worthy of Washington, does not appear to have commended itself to
Colonel Morgan.
MIDDLEBROOK 63
their own strength, by discovering to every individual
the zeal and spirit of their neighbours." ^
On the nineteenth of June Howe broke up his
camp, and disappeared from the vicinity of Middle-
brook. Next day, when the Americans became aware
that, instead of making a flank-march on Philadelphia,
he had set his face steadily rearward towards Perth
Amboy and the sea, they made the country-side
resound with their cheering, and with salvoes of gun-
powder which they were no longer afraid of wasting.
Washington, with some misgivings, descended from his
stronghold ; but it was neither safe nor easy to molest
a retreating force of superior strength, which had a
very short space to traverse before reaching home, and
which had never been defeated in battle. The British
soldiers marched along silent, and very gloomy; in
a temper boding ill to any foe who might be incautious
enough to meddle with them. At last they had an
opportunity of turning upon their pursuers. Stirling's
division had approached them unsupported ; and he
was vigorously attacked by Cornwallis. Stirling, who
was still something of a military pedant, neglected
the rare advantages which the locality presented, and
drew up his command in parade-ground order ; while
Cornwallis made no mistakes, and gave full play to the
indignant valour of his followers. The ardour excited
by an emulation between the English and German
troops **was conspicuous and irresistible."^ Their one
thought was to get at the Americans ; and Stirling's
regiments, leaving three field-pieces, and many prisoners,
in the hands of the Hessian grenadiers and the British
footguards, retired with headlong haste, and most cer-
tainly not in any one of those tactical formations which
were dear to the heart of their Divisional General.
Washington thereupon went back to the hills ; and Howe
1 Washington to Major General Schuyler, on the sixteenth June ; to
Major General Arnold, on the seventeenth ; and to the President of
Congress on the twentieth.
2 " History of Europe " in the Annual Register for 1777 ; Chapter 7.
64 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
transported his army to Staten Island. He was attended
across the channel by a troop of broken and ruined
men ; — those New Jersey Tories whom he had forced
into a public declaration of Royalist fidelity with no
reasonable prospect that he would in the end be able
to protect them from the resentment of their Republican
fellow-citizens. His latest act before departing in-
tensified that resentment ; for, as he descended the
Raritan, he burned down the dwelling-houses, in town
and country, which had sheltered his own troops during
that inclement winter. " The evacuation of Jersey at this
time," (so Washington wrote,) ** seems to be a peculiar
mark of Providence, as the inhabitants have an oppor-
tunity of securing their harvests of hay and grain, which
would in all probability have undergone the same fate
with many farm-houses, had it been ripe enough to take
fire. The distress of many of the inhabitants, who were
plundered not only of their effects, but of their pro-
vision of every kind, was such, that I sent down several
loads of meat and flour to supply their present wants."
Sir William Howe left the Jerseys in a miserable
plight ; and he never again set his foot upon their soil.^
Washington, though he had the very strongest rea-
sons for getting at the inward meaning of Sir William
Howe's strategical movements, confessed that he had
been " much at a loss to account for these strange
manoeuvres." Howe's own explanation was that he
marched out to Middlebrook on the chance of tempting
his adversary to fight a battle ; and he claimed that the
stratagem had succeeded.^ But any advantage which
^ Washington to Major General Armstrong, 4th July, 1777 ; to the
President of Congress, 22nd June ; and to Major General Schuyler, 2nd
July. In all these letters the burning of houses, and the plunder of those
which were left standing, is described as enormous in extent, and of set
and systematic purpose. "The late conduct of the enemy," (so Gov-
ernor Trumbull was informed by his son, the Commissary-General of the
American armies,) " has converted all the Tories in this part of the world,
and left not one remaining."
- Howe's despatch to Lord George Germaine ; London Gazette of
August 22, 1777. Howe spoke to the same effect in the House of Com-
mons on March 29, 1779.
MIDDLEBROOK 65
he had obtained over General Stirling fell greatly short
of those victorious and decisive results which the King
of England had been led to anticipate. His Majesty
had informed Lord North that the campaign, in Sir
William Howe's opinion, would ** go deep towards end-
ing this vexatious though necessary business ; " ^ and
the hope which George the Third ventured to entertain
was shared by many, and perhaps by most, of his
subjects. On the fifteenth of June, while Howe was
encamped before Middlebrook, Doctor Price wrote thus
from his residence in a southern suburb of London :
** The general talk here of military men, and of the
Ministry, is that Philadelphia will be taken, and the
war with the Americans decided, this summer. Such is
the confidence with which this is given out that many
of those who are least disposed to credit such assertions
are staggered. So certain do the Bishops in particular
think the speedy conquest of America that they have
formed a committee for taking into consideration meas-
ures for settling Bishops in America, agreeably to an in-
timation at the conclusion of the Archbishop of York's
sermon in February last to the Society for propagating
the Gospel." 2
Surprise and mortification very naturally ensued when
it became known that the forward movement of the
British had been abruptly discontinued, and their whole
army withdrawn to the islands in New York Bay. A
professional reputation, as considerable as that of Sir
William Howe, always dies hard ; and his sturdier ad-
mirers in America did their utmost to defend him. *' We
do not," (so one of them reported from Nova Scotia,)
" hear yet of any general action. Our General acts upon
the solid principles of old Fabius, which worries and dis-
^ The King's letter was written from Kew on July the eleventh, after
the retirement from Middlebrook, but long before the story of it arrived
in England.
2 Letters to and from Richard Price, D.D., F.R.S. ; 1 767-1 790; Re-
printed from I'he Proceedings of the Massachtisetts Historical Society ^
May, 1903.
VOL. IV. F
66 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
tresses the rebels more than a battle." ^ But a campaign
in which the part of Fabius was doubled, and that of Han-
nibal altogether omitted, was an exhilarating performance
to no one, and least of all to the British tax-payer. The
announcement that Sir William Howe had penetrated
into the heart of New Jersey ; had stayed there a week
without enlisting any active support from a population
whose attachment to the royal cause had been loudly
proclaimed, and sincerely credited, in London ; and had
then left the province in General Washington's undis-
puted possession ; — afforded matter for serious reflec-
tion to unprejudiced Englishmen of both political parties.
They were painfully impressed by the inertness and help-
lessness of the American loyalists ; and they reflected
with dismay that a country, which took so very long
to conquer, would necessarily cost a terrible amount of
money to retain. A permanent military occupation of
the thirteen colonies could not fail to involve England
in a never-ending expenditure which all the treasures
that had been extracted in times past from Peru, and
Mexico, would hardly have sufficed to defray. Horace
Walpole declared that, as far as his own observation
went, General Howe's retirement from in front of General
Washington had given rise to a feeling of positive
despair. "In one thing," he said, "all that come from
America agree, that an alienation from this country is
incredible and universal ; so that instead of obtaining
a revenue thence, which was the pretence of the war,
the conquest would only entail boundless expense to pre-
serve it. The New World will at last be revenged on
the Old." 2
1 Eleventh Report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission\ Appen*
dix, Part V., page 417,
2 Horace Walpole to Sir Horace Mann ; Strawberry Hill, Sept. i, 1777.
CHAPTER XXX
burgoyne's army, burgoyne's proclamation,
schuyler and gates. ticonderoga
The exultation in America was in full proportion,
and something over, to the chagrin and disappointment
which prevailed in England. But these emotions were
all of them premature ; for the crisis was still to come ;
and the combatants had in front of them a whole year
of fierce and continuous tussle, with frequent and memo-
rable alternations of triumph and defeat. And yet, dis-
tant as might be the termination of that prolonged and
well-contested campaign, the inevitable issue had al-
ready been decided in Downing Street before ever the
fighting began. The British plan of operations had been
maturely and copiously discussed by the British Cabinet,
and had been hopelessly and grievously bungled. All
through the winter and spring Sir William Howe, and
the Ministry in London, were in active communication ;
if indeed that expression can be applied to a corre-
spondence which had so far to travel, and travelled so
slowly, that an answer seldom came to hand within four-
teen weeks after a letter had been written.^
Those were circumstances in which the government
at home had no rational course open before it except
to adopt the advice, and strengthen the hands, of the
general in the field. Sir William Howe had been care-
ful and specific in his proposals, guarded in his prom-
ises, and very far from immoderate in his demands. He
was enough of a politician to know something, though
not everything, about the ways of the British War
Office ; and, (while he placed on record his conviction
that a very large number of additional troops was re-
1 The reply to Sir William Howe's despatch of the 30th November.
1776, reached him on the 9th March, 1777. He wrote another most impor-
tant letter on the 2nd April, and received the answer on the i6th August.
67 F 2
6S THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
quired in America,) he confined himself to asking for a
reinforcement of fifteen thousand rank and file, which
would raise his army to the indispensable minimum of
five-and-thirty thousand effective men. He represented
that, even with this force in hand, it was useless to
begin by an attempt on New England, where the popu-
lation was very large, and of warlike temper ; and where
Washington, who was sure to follow the British every-
where, and never to fight them except at his own time,
and on ground of his own choosing, would have them
at a considerable disadvantage. In Pennsylvania, how-
ever, the prospect was very different. The local militia
of that State was of comparatively small weight in the
scale of war ; it would be incumbent upon the American
commander to risk a battle in order to protect the Capi-
tal of the Confederacy ; *' and my opinion," (said Howe,)
" has always been that the defeat of the rebel regular
army was the surest road to peace." When that army
had been crushed, it was not one province, but three,
which would constitute the certain and immediate prize
of victory ; for the destinies of New York and New
Jersey were bound up in the fate of Pennsylvania. The
royal authority would be firmly re-established in a vast,
compact, and central region, where political incUnations
were nearly balanced ; and where love of ease, and the
craving for peace, must always induce a majority of the
people to accept, and even to welcome, the dominion
of the strongest. From that secure, and conveniently
situated, base of operations the British army would
thereafter proceed to attack, and subjugate, first Vir-
ginia and the Carolinas, and eventually Connecticut and
Massachusetts. It was a policy, (so Sir William Howe
declared,) which he was confident would lead to a pros-
perous conclusion of the war.
That was a reasonable and practicable scheme,
thought out by a man who had learned the geography
of America from recent, and most instructive, experi-
ence ; and who was familiar with her roads, her water-
ways, her forests, and (above all) with the quality of her
BURGOYNES ARMY 69
people. It was an occasion when everything should
have been left to the undivided responsibility of the
officer in command on the spot. Napoleon has said
that one bad general is better than two good ones ; ^
and Sir William Howe's projected campaign was now
spoiled by the interference of a man whom it would be
satire to call a good general, and whose orders were
issued, not from the tent or the saddle, but from a desk
in a public office three thousand miles away. Lord
George Germaine had been made Secretary for the
Colonies because he could debate, and for no other
reason in the world ; but he esteemed himself highly
as a military authority, although he had long ago been
dismissed with ignominy from military employment.
He had never served outside Europe ; he underrated
the resources of the Americans ; he entirely miscon-
ceived their national character ; and he hated the very
name of Bostonian. The most successful performance
of his whole life had been that artful and powerful
diatribe against the pretentious shopkeepers, and the
" riotous rabble," of Boston which carried triumphantly
through Parliament the Bill for putting an end to repre-
sentative government in Massachusetts ; and his private
letters prove that the eloquence of his vituperation was
inspired by sincere dislike and contempt for the popu-
lation which he was denouncing. His judgment on
military questions, bad at the best, was distorted by
his political prejudices. Germaine deliberately esti-
mated the doubtful and dearly purchased British suc-
cess at Bunker's Hill as a mortal blow to the New
Englanders, whose troops, in his view, were too undis-
ciplined to "act well upon the defensive." In point of
fact, for the size of the forces engaged, Bunker's Hill
was the most murderous of all defensive battles which
had been fought since the invention of gunpowder.^
1 General Bonaparte to Carnot ; Lodi, May 14, 1796.
2 Manuscripts of Mrs. Stopfer d Sackville of Drayton House ^ North-
amptonshire, The first volume includes letters from Germaine of July 2%
1774; and of May 30, June 13, and July 26, 1775.
70 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Such were the quaHfications and antecedents of the
minister to whom had been committed the charge of
recovering America for the Crown. Germaine exer-
cised Lord Chatham's functions ; but he had not mas-
tered Lord Chatham's methods. If he mistrusted a
general on active service, he ought to have recalled
him, as he himself had been recalled after Minden and
replaced by Granby. But, as long as Howe was re-
tained in command, Germaine should have provided
him with the means of victory as loyally as Chatham
had supplied them to Wolfe and Amherst, Hawke, Bos-
cawen, Clive, and the Keppels. He should have left
Quebec and Montreal in the secure custody of Sir Guy
Carleton, whose masculine statesmanship, and martial
energy, had brought the northern colony safe through
much graver perils than any by which it now was
threatened ; and most of the royal troops in Canada
might then have been transferred by sea to New York
Bay, as a valuable addition to the strength of the main
British army.^ Every soldier, meanwhile, who could be
spared from any barrack in the three kingdoms, should
have been shipped across the ocean to make up the tale
of those reinforcements for which Sir William Howe
quietly and respectfully, but most insistently, petitioned.
He had represented himself as having use for at least
twenty thousand more men ; but he consented to make
fifteen thousand serve. The Home Government re-
sponded by promising him eight thousand, and sent
him exactly twenty-nine hundred, but never a bayonet
or a sabre more.^
Germaine had conceived the ambitious hope of com-
^ This course was so obvious that a report of its having been carried
into execution made its way into well-informed newspapers. " It is said,"
(so one journal reported,) " that General I^urgoyne has got orders to leave
a garrison at Quebec, embark the troops, and bring them round by sea to
Nev*' York, as it will take too much time to cross t!)e Lakes."
2 These undisputed facts are minutely detailed by Sir William Howe
in his speech to the House of Commons of March, 1779. "The army," he
said, "fit for actual duty, exclusive of about two thousand provincials, was
fourteen thousand short of the number I had expected."
BURGOYNE'S ARMY 7I
pensating for deficiency of numbers by brilliant and
novel strategy. That resource has frequently been em-
ployed with success in wars between regular armies, and
in highly civilised regions ; although perhaps not quite
so frequently as historians have induced their readers
to believe. But in order to beat down the resistance,
and enforce the obedience, of an armed and resolute
population dispersed over an enormous extent of coun-
try of which many districts are only partially settled, or
altogether unreclaimed from the desert, an overwhelm-
ing superiority of strength on the side of the invader
is an indispensable requisite. To that truth, however,
Lord George Germaine was blind ; and he made prepara-
tions for entangling the enemy in a network of compli-
cated and delicate manoeuvres. A mixed force of Tories
and Indians, under the command of Colonel St. Leger,
was to march down the Mohawk valley from the west ;
while the Canadian army was to traverse the Lakes, and
join hands with Sir William Howe, as he advanced
northwards towards Albany. At that point all the three
columns would converge upon the Americans, in front,
flank, and rear ; and would master and occupy the whole
course of the Hudson river, so as to dissever the New
England States from the rest of the insurgent colonies.^
Such a design looked well on paper, and was cleverly
contrived for use on one of those bewildering occasions
when a Cabinet of civilian politicians is under the neces-
sity of resolving itself into a Council of War. The
secret leaked out, and was hailed in fashionable circles
with a feeling of satisfaction, which rose to veritable en-
thusiasm when an ardent and voluble exponent of
Germaine's proposals appeared upon the scene in the
person of General Burgoyne. That officer had hurried
home, as usual, to look after his professional interests ;
and all through that winter season he was whispering
with Ministers, begging for a private interview with
his rather reluctant Sovereign, haranguing the citizens
^ A map of the district between Quebec and Albany may be found at
the end of the Fourth Chapter of this volume.
72 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
of Westminster, and giving lectures on military science
in clubs and drawing-rooms. At a Cabinet Council,
held in March 1777, Burgoyne was selected to com-
mand the northern army ; and amateur strategists ii?
London society, of both sexes, spoke airily and approv-
ingly of his plan for cutting the rebellion in two by
a chain of military posts which was to extend, without a
break, from the River St. Lawrence to Manhattan Island.
The principles of strategy, however, are anything
but nonsense, although nonsense may be talked about
them ; and the most essential of those principles was
recklessly violated by Germaine, when he made over to
the Americans the immense advantage of operating on
an interior line of country. Montreal and New York,
the points of departure for the two principal British
armies, were separated from each other by three hun-
dred miles of hostile territory. Every request for
mutual support, and every suggestion for a modification
in the original plan of campaign, had to be sent round
over fifteen hundred miles of river and ocean. The
despatches exchanged between Howe and l^urgoyne,
when they were not intercepted by the enemy, took
little less than three months to go and come; while
the Commander-in-Chief at New York was unable to
maintain any communication whatever with Colonel St.
Leger ; for the head of the Mohawk Valley lay in the
depths of the wilderness, more than fifty leagues to the
southwest of Montreal. On the other hand the several
divisions of the American army were quartered at a
reasonable distance from each other, in fertile and open
districts traversed by highways which, whether good or
bad, were among the best roads on that Continent.
Washington might learn what was passing on the
Northern Lakes within fifty hours after it was known
at Albany. He had stationed a powerful reserve, —
equipped for a start on short and sudden notice, and
under the alert supervision of Israel Putnam, — at a
central point from which reinforcements could reach
his own camp at Morristown in four easy marches, and
BURGOYNES ARMY 73
could cover the journey to Ticonderoga well inside the
fortnight. Each of the three isolated British columns,
from first to last, depended exclusively on its own
strength, and had no alternative except to retreat, or
succumb, when that strength became exhausted ; but
the Republican generals were in a position to assist
each other in turn wherever, and whenever, the danger
threatened. Some of the Continental regiments, after
fighting to the finish at Saratoga, rejoined Washington
in ample time to take part in that forward movement by
which the campaign in the Central provinces was event-
ually decided. Nor was that all ; for America had been
placed by the folly of her adversary in a situation which
enabled her to get double service from her best military
leaders, as well as from her best battaHons. The prepos-
terous character of Germaine's grand strategical combina-
tion is curiously illustrated by the opportunities for
distinction which it successively afforded to one and
the same American officer. Benedict Arnold first put
Colonel St. Leger to the rout ; he next helped to defeat
General Burgoyne ; and he ended by being appointed to
command in Philadelphia when the British army was at
length obhged to evacuate that city.
Germaine's plan had a special attraction for its author
because it inflicted a public slight upon one whom he
regarded as a personal opponent. He detested Sir
Guy Carleton as a wise and sympathetic ruler, whose
policy was in sharp contrast to his own ; as a distin-
guished ornament of the profession to which he himself
had ceased to belong ; and as a subordinate who was at
no pains to simulate respect or admiration for his official
superior. The Secretary of State would long ago have
done the Colonial Governor a very ill turn, if their
common master had not interfered to protect the
worthier of his two servants.^ George the Third was
resolved that the man who had saved Canada should
never be subjected to wanton insult, nor visited by a
1 George the Third to Lord North ; Queen's House, December 13th,
1776. 10 minutes past 9 A.M.
74 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION'
direct penalty ; but he did not now feel justified in over-
riding his Ministers when they urged him to appoint
Burgoyne to the command of the northern army. That
appointment was a cruel blow to the Governor of Canada.
As soon as Burgoyne crossed the British frontier he
would be, to all intents and purposes, an independent
general ; making requisitions which would have to be
supplied, promptly and obediently, from the material
resources of Carleton's province ; and corresponding
directly, over the Governor's head, with that Secretary
of State in London who was the Governor's notorious
enemy. The situation was intolerable. Sir Guy Carleton
sent in his resignation ; but Lord North refused to accept
it on the ground that his abandonment of such a post, at
so critical a moment, would be disadvantageous to the
interests of the State. George the Third expressed his
concurrence with the action of the Prime Minister in
a letter marked by the honourable feeling, the sound
common-sense, the plain language, and the exemplary
brevity, with which a King ought to write. " Anyone,"
he said, " that will for an instant suppose himself in the
situation of Sir Guy Carleton, must feel that the resign-
ing the government of Quebec is the only dignified
part. Though I think, as things were situated, the
ordering him to remain in the province was a necessary
measure, yet it must be owned to be mortifying to a
soldier. The General seems at the same time to have
facilitated as much as possible the steps necessary for
enabling Burgoyne to cross the Lakes." ^
That praise had been fairly earned ; for Carleton,
in his dealings with Burgoyne, displayed rare public
spirit, and a still rarer generosity towards the man who
was virtually, although not nominally, his successor in
office. Nothing which could contribute to securing a
victory for the British arms was neglected by the
Governor of Canada. He maintained in complete repair
the Royal squadron which dominated the Lakes, and
1 George the Third to Lord North; Kew, July 2nd, 1777. 56 min.
past 5 P.M.
BURGOYNE'S ARMY 75
the flotilla of barges which was to carry Burgoyne
and his troops two thirds of their way by water. He
strained his influence, and hazarded his popularity, by
urging the French settlers, during the season when the
crops should be sown, to hand over their teams for the
purposes of military transport, and to engage themselves
as pioneers and boatmen in the service of the expedition.
He sedulously practised the royal infantry in manoeuvres
specially adapted for the requirements of forest warfare ;
and, reserving the very smallest garrison which the in-
ternal security of his province demanded, he handed over
to Burgoyne the rest of the Canadian army in high con-
dition, and in a state of perfect discipline.^
A fine little army it was; and in some important
respects John Burgoyne was not unworthy to command
it. He knew how to keep troops in better order, —
with less of the court-martial, and very much less of the
lash, — than any general of his time ; for he treated his
officers as friends, and the private soldiers, (to employ
his own words,) " as thinking beings." ^ He was eagerly
welcomed by his new command. One of his subalterns
confidently assured a friend in England that there was
no doubt of the result of the campaign " if good dis-
cipline, joined to health and great spirit amongst the
men, with their being led on by General Burgoyne, who
was universally esteemed and respected, could ensure
success."^ It was a case of love at first sight between
1 " In this trying and difficult situation the Governor endeavoured to
show that resentment could not warp him from his duty ; and he applied
himself with the same diligence and energy to forward by every possible
means, and to support in all its parts, the expedition, as if the arrange-
ments were entirely his own." " History of Europe " ; Annual Register
for 1777 ; chapter 8.
2 Mr. Edward Barrington de Fonblanque's Biography of the Right
Hon. General John Burgoyne', pages 15 to 22. The whole passage
should be studied. It is full of interest and instruction.
^ Travels through the Interior Parts of America ; in a Series of
Letters by an Officer. London, MDCCXCI. The dedication, addressed
to the Earl of Harrington, is signed by Lieutenant Thomas Anburey. To
judge from internal evidence, it is probable that those letters which are
dated during the advance on Saratoga were written at a subsequent
period. But the narrative is in a high degree authentic.
76 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Burgoyne and his army ; and the pride and devotion
with which his followers regarded him increased with
closer knowledge, stood proof under the test of danger
and toil, and survived even after they had all been
subjected together to the last extremity of mahgnant
fortune.
Burgoyne's troops had the sterling qualities of our
national infantry, and, in an aggravated form, what was
then the most serious of its defects ; for there was not
nearly enough of them. The British numbered a little
more than four thousand rank and file. At that
epoch the soldiers in any group of regiments, taken at
random from the English army-list, were sure to be
courageous and hardy as the sea is salt ; and Burgoyne's
troops were no chance medley of hastily collected
battalions. The task which they had now to perform
had been half done the year before, and had been left
incomplete under circumstances which piqued, but in
no sense cooled or diminished, their ardour and self-
confidence. They had worked in concert; and they all
knew their parts like a troop of actors in a piece which
has been rehearsed. They were led by men who had
been selected on the ground of tried and acknowledged
professional merit. One of Burgoyne's three brigades
was commanded by Colonel Simon Fraser, who had
been wounded in battle long before he came of age,
and had served with Wolfe at Louisburg and at Quebec.
Another brigade of infantry was very judiciously en-
trusted to General Phillips, — than whom it may well be
doubted whether a better artillery officer, in quarters or
in the field, ever held a commission ; and Phillips was
likewise in charge of a train of ordnance comprising
thirty-eight field-pieces and sixteen heavy guns.^
The battalions of Light Infantry and Grenadiers
^ The employment of artillery officers in the command of infantry
brigades was at that time contrary to regulation. Burgoyne defended
himself for having gone outside the rule by a statement that the service
would be injured ** to the most material degree if the talents of General
PhiUips were not suffered to extend beyond the artillery." De Fon-
blanque's Life of Burgoyne ; Appendix D, page 189.
BURGOYNE'S ARMY
77
were pronounced by an eye witness to be such a body
of men as " could not be raised in a twelvemonth,
search England through." Lord Balcarres, who united
long military experience to full physical vigour, — for
he had spent in the army twenty of the iive-and-thirty
years which he had lived in the world, — was Colonel of
the Light Infantry ; and the Grenadiers were placed
under the command of John Dyke Acland, the kind of
leader whom our soldiers have always been very willing
to follow. He was the heir apparent of the greatest
family of English land-owners who have consented to
remain Commoners. Belonging to a class which then
monopolised all the chances, he entered the service as
Ensign in the spring of 1774, and he became Major in
the early winter of 1775. He was in Parliament as
a matter of course ; but all the county-seats in the dis-
tricts with which his father was connected were already
occupied by his elders, and he sate for a Cornish
borough. His wife was a daughter of the first Lord
Ilchester ; and he thus became cousin by marriage to
Charles Fox. The two young fellows were political
antagonists, and something of rivals; and they knew so
very much about each other's frailties and shortcomings
that their frequent exchanges of eloquent discourtesies
were never deficient in point, and were keenly relished
by the House of Commons. Acland, (as had once
been the case with Fox,) was a Ministerialist with
whose presence and patronage Ministers would very
gladly have dispensed ; and he was viewed with mingled
feelings by his Sovereign. George the Third, while
applauding his zeal for the Prerogative, instinctively
recognised in him the sort of Tory who would almost
infallibly turn into a Whig at the age when his support
began to be really worth having. Whenever Lord
North displayed any symptoms of a friendlier spirit
towards the rebellious colonists, Acland was always at
hand to lead a mutiny ; and in his speeches he habitually
assailed the Americans with every accusation under the
sun except the charge of cowardice. That taunt he left
^S THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
for the use of orators and pamphleteers who were less
ready than himself to draw sword for their opinions.
His manners were bluff and downright, of the country
rather than the town ; but he had a noble nature, and
his faults were those which do not alienate affection.
His wife accompanied him to Canada, and followed
him on the march. She was endowed with what the
third Lord Holland called "the Fox temper," and with
all the Fox charm of mind and manner. Lady Harriet
became a universal favourite with the officers of Acland's
regiment, who, under her gentle sway, were enlivened
and refined by home influences, and, (so far as she and
her husband could provide them,) well supplied with
home comforts.^
The rest of Burgoyne's force, outside his British
regiments, was of heterogeneous origin and most
uncertain quality. He had expected great things from
the Canadian militia, who in former wars had marched
out to support the French army with much docility, and
in considerable numbers. But the British rule was
popular in Canada mainly because the inhabitants were
no longer liable to be called away from their farming
and fishing in order to fight against King George ;
and, now that they were asked to fight for him,
only seven or eight score of them appeared in arms.
Burgoyne's command included more than three thou-
sand Germans, who were mostly Brunswickers. That
was an honourable name in military annals ; but the
soldiers whom the Hereditary Prince of Brunswick
had so often led to victory during the Seven Years'
War were very different from the throng of recruits
whom, in March 1776, he shipped for England at thirty
I " I was much pleased at a little politesse of that amiable woman,
Lady Harriet Acland. Exclusive of the excellent qualities that had
already endeared her to the officers of the grenadiers, she thought
proper to express a sense of their attention to her, (and who could be
inattentive?) by some little present. So a few days before the officers
took the field, she sent each of them, (thirty in number,) half a large
Cheshire cheese ; which was no such small present as you may imagine,
English cheese being then a dollar per pound." Travels through the
Interior Parts of America-, Letter XVIIL
BURGOYNE'S ARMY
79
crowns a head. The majority of them had been swept
into the ranks by wholesale conscription ; and the most
productive haul of the net was said to have been made
on a certain Sunday, when gangs of crimps simulta-
neously beset every place of worship throughout the
Duchy. That story was current in the British army,
and found ready credence with those among our officers
who were cantoned with the Germans in Canada. The
intelhgent and experienced English colonels who went
down from London to Portsmouth, for the purpose of
mustering the Brunswick contingent into King George's
service, had reported that a very large proportion of the
privates were either half -grown lads or elderly civilians.^
Of the captains, and the subalterns, many were broken-
down veterans, brought out of retirement by the threat
of losing their half-pay if they showed themselves
recalcitrant ; and some even among the ensigns were
too old for the evolutions of a field-day, and far too old
for the backwoods. The troops had been sent from
Brunswick so badly clothed and shod that, when they
reached our shores, a new outfit had to be procured for
them at the expense of the British Treasury ; and,
even then, they sailed for North America with no over-
coats. Those of them who were parents and house-
holders suffered miserably from home-sickness during
the dreary Canadian winter; and their dejection preyed
upon their health to an extent that attracted the obser-
vation, and excited the pity, of their more stout-hearted
British comrades.^
Burgoyne's Germans had the good fortune to be
under the fatherly care of an excellent officer. Baron
1 Lowell's Hessians; Chapter 9. Letter from Colonel Harcourt of
April 3, 1776. Travels through the Interior Parts of America;
Letter LXIX.
'•^ " The Germans, to the number of twenty and thirty at a time, will
in their conversation relate to each other that they are sure that they shall
not live to see home again, and are certain that they shall very soon die.
Nor can any medicine or advice you can give them divert this settled
superstition, which they as surely die martyrs to as ever it affects them.
. . . This is a circumstance well known to every one in the army."
Travels through the interior Parts of America \ Letter of January 28th,
1777.
80 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Friedrich Adolph von Riedesel possessed the homely
virtues, the frugal orderly habits, and the scrupulous, if
not very enlightened, sense of duty, which then were
often to be found among noble families in the smaller
German States. A Hessian by birth, and a soldier from
boyhood, he had transferred himself to the Brunswick
service, where he was honoured by the approval, and ad-
vanced by the favour, of Prince Ferdinand. General
Riedesel was a punctual and a painstaking officer ; but
his military reputation, if left to itself, would not have
outlasted his lifetime ; and he is known to posterity, re-
spectably enough, as the husband of his wife. The
Letters and Journals of Madame Riedesel, in their
original form, and still more in the English translation,
are, and will long remain, a standard work. Her book
portrays British and German manners of four genera-
tions ago with native skill, and an agreeable absence of
literary pretension or affectation, marred by a taste for
reckless, and sometimes rather malicious, gossip ; and
she has drawn a vivid, and exceedingly unvarnished,
picture of town and country life in the interior districts
of the revolted colonies, where the poor lady's hard
fate compelled her to make a very protracted sojourn.
To her and Lady Harriet Acland, — and to a worthy
lieutenant who published a narrative of the campaign
in the shape of seventy-nine epistles to his friends in
England, — the world is indebted for an intimate ac-
quaintance with what may be called the domestic history
of Burgoyne's expedition. Madame Riedesel left her
home three months after the General's departure ; passed
the winter in London ; and rejoined her husband near
Montreal, in June 1777, a very few days before the
army marched. Riedesel had written to his wife regu-
larly all the while their separation lasted ; and his letters
treated of many topics. He discoursed on the dangers
of the ocean; the climate and scenery of Canada; the
health and conduct of his soldiers ; his own opportuni-
ties for religious worship and meditation ; and the
defects or conveniences of the quarters which he succes-
BURGOYNE'S ARMY 8l
sively occupied. He descanted, with never-failing in-
terest, and impressive gravity, on his dinners and
suppers, on the quality of the viands, the peculiarities
of the cooking, and the market-price, (when he could
manage to ascertain it,) of every article of food and
drink which was set before him. But nowhere in his
correspondence was there any reference whatever to
the merits of the dispute in which he was engaged as a
combatant. It apparently had not crossed his mind to
inquire on which side of the quarrel justice lay, and
why he himself had come to America with the object
of killing people who had never wronged his own coun-
try or his own Sovereign.
In an unfortunate hour, and in spite of Sir Guy Carle-
ton's earnest and reiterated protests, the Cabinet had
insisted that the invading force should be attended by a
strong party of Indian warriors. Five hundred of them
obeyed the summons ; actuated, (it is not uncharitable
to beheve,) by no settled conviction with regard to the
fiscal or constitutional questions at issue between Con-
gress and the Parliament at Westminster. They were
allured into the British camp by the prospect of getting
as much rum as they cared to drink, and by the more
ideal ambition of obtaining scalps to decorate their
wigwams; for they set greater store on these hor-
rible ornaments than did Cornwallis on the blue ribbon
which he wore with reluctance, or Burgoyne on the red
ribbon which he could never be prevailed on to accept.-^
Lord North and his colleagues were not acting in igno-
rance ; inasmuch as a very recent incident had thrown a
glaring light on the true nature of Indian warfare. In
the course of the previous year, at the battle of The
Cedars on the Canadian frontier, a considerable number
of New Hampshire militiamen had surrendered to the
1 " At one of the Indian encampments," Lieutenant Anburey writes,
" I saw several scalps hanging upon poles, in front of their wigwams.
One of them had remarkably fine long hair hanging to it. An officer
that was with me wanted to purchase it, at which the Indian seemed
highly offended ; nor would he part with this barbarous trophy, although
he was offered so strong a temptation as a bottle of rum."
VOL. IV. G
82 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
British commander on a distinct understanding that they
would be protected from his Indian friends. But the
red men could not be restrained. They scalped all the
wounded Americans ; roasted one of the prisoners alive ;
murdered seven or eight of the others ; and carried off
the survivors into the recesses of the woods. ^ No civil-
ised official, however honest and resolute, could maintain
any effective control over the wayward minds and unbri-
dled appetites of the savages ; and that truth was daily,
and most disagreeably, brought home to the unlucky
gentleman who held the post of Indian Superintendent. ^
The possession by a warrior of a scalp, and even of
many scalps, was no real indication of his personal
valour. An Indian brave, whose tribe had assisted the
French or the English in their struggle for the Mississippi
Valley, took credit for the heads of hair which he tore
from the soldiers who had been killed or disabled by
their European adversaries in fair stand-up conflict.
The fla.xen curls of childhood, and the white locks of
helpless old age, all counted as legitimate trophies ;
and the long tresses of a woman were held in special
value. The literary legend of the noble savage was
not yet in vogue, and it would assuredly have found very
sceptical readers in the officers of General Burgoyne's
army. Any illusions which a subaltern, fresh from
England, might have entertained about Indian chivalry
and fidelity were dispelled weeks before the expedition
arrived on the upper waters of the Hudson River. As
fighting men, during the whole of the Saratoga cam-
paign, our Wyandots and Algonquins were a great deal
'^ American Archives. Washington to the President of Congress ; 15
July, 1776.
'^ " A few days since I was invited to dine with Captain Frazer, who
is superintendent over the Indians. We had scarcely drank five glasses
when the Indians returned, upon a pretence of business to him, which
was no other than that of procuring more rum ; which Captain Frazer
refusing them, they grew extremely troublesome, and, with the liquor
they had already drank, were much beyond any control. They paid no
attention to Captain Frazer, who, finding he could not pacify or in any
way get rid of them, made us an apology, and the company broke up."
The above passage occurs in Lieutenant Anburey's nineteenth letter.
BURGOYNES ARMY 83
worse than useless. More than one promising com.
bination for surrounding and surprising the enemy was
ruined by their premature appearance on the scene of
action, and their disorderly flight when the firing began
in earnest.^ And when a success had been gained, and
the English regiments advanced to occupy the hostile
position, our soldiers were shocked by the sight of living
forms, hideously disfigured, writhing in agony on the
ground ; for the scalp-hunters, who had been invisible
during the heat of the combat, always contrived to slip
through to the front as soon as ever the danger ended.
The presence of the red man in Burgoyne's ranks
was defended in the House of Commons on the plea
that the same thing had been done before. Precedents
were discovered in the Iroquois who co-operated with
Montcalm, and the Oneidas who in 1758 helped Brad-
street to capture the stronghold of Frontenac on Lake
Ontario. Those precedents wxre not in point. The
French and the English governments had more than
once accepted Indian aid against the regular armies of
a foreign enemy ; but that case was very different from
the employment of savages for the purpose of reducing
to obedience the population of thickly inhabited and
industrial districts. In the campaigns of the French
wars the antagonists of the Indians were professional
soldiers who had marched into the desert armed for
attack and defence, and who were prepared manfully to
encounter all the perils and misadventures which might
befall them in the pursuit of their military duties. The
battles, moreover, which decided those campaigns were
fought in the very heart of the Indian country ; and
Cherokees and Hurons would under any circumstances
have flocked uninvited to the field of carnage as
instinctively, and in almost as great numbers, as the
carrion-crows and the wolves. But Connecticut and
1 Sir Guy Carleton was thoroughly acquainted with the mih'tary value
of the Indians. "They were easily dejected," he said, "and chose to be
of the strongest side ; so that, when they were the most wanted, they
vanished."
G 2
84 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Massachusetts, and the Eastern townships of New York
State and of Pennsylvania, were not heathen wilder-
nesses, but well-to-do and well-ordered Christian com-
munities. New England, in particular, was a region of
assured prosperity and ancient peace, where the memory
of the old Indian raids had long been a faint, and
almost meaningless, tradition. Many years had rolled
away since the boldest savages had ventured to show
themselves in their war-paint within a .hundred miles
of New Haven or of Boston. But now they were coming
in hundreds, — and with thousands to follow, — in the
wake of an invading British army ; and the tomahawk,
the torch, and the scalping-knife would very soon be at
work in farmhouse and village throughout tracts of
country which for generations past had been as secure
from such a visitation as Westmorland, or Kent, or
Worcestershire.
A course of action which could lead to such results
need not be treated from the point of view of ethics ;
for it is sufficiently condemned on the ground of its
monstrous impolicy. The British army, small as it was,
would have done better without any of its auxiliaries ;
for the strength which they contributed was more than
neutralised by the resistance which they provoked.
Lord George Germaine, when he framed his plan of
operations, apparently forgot that the New England
provinces lay close up to Burgoyne's flank along the
whole extent of his slender and unguarded line of
march. Those provinces, the cradle and citadel of the
revolt, swarmed with men who had some experience in
war, and much skill with their weapon. Their tastes
were pacific, and they required a very strong motive to
draw them into the field ; but that motive would be
supplied by the knowledge that a powerful column of
German infantry, and a long file of hostile Indians,
were travelling day after day, for months together,
within a few miles of their own borders. The American
minute-man, in open fight, was not the least afraid of
either the Indians or the Germans; but Germans and
BURGOYNE'S PROCLAMATION 85
Indians were the very last people in the world whom
he would wish to see in the immediate neighbourhood
of his home and his family. An aggressive movement
of the British forces, in the company of such allies, was
a menace and a challenge to New England ; and, if
once New England were fairly roused, Burgoyne's
communications with Canada would be cut within the
twenty-four hours, and, before another week had elapsed,
the safety of his whole force would be in deadly
jeopardy. But Cabinet Ministers in London had talked
themselves and each other, and had tried to talk Parlia-
ment, into a belief that every New Englander was
a born poltroon, whose forefathers, when they sailed
for America, had left the courage of their race be-
hind them. Germaine's moral obtuseness on this vital
point, combined with his portentous blunders in strategy,
had prepared a bad future for the gallant British cohorts
which went forth to battle under his ill-omened auspices.
As if the rebellious colonies were not sufficiently
alive to the prospective horrors of an Indian raid,
Burgoyne himself, of his own motion, gave those
horrors the loudest possible advertisement. With
characteristic avidity he seized an opportunity for
making an oration as soon as he had crossed the
frontier, and got beyond the hearing of Sir Guy
Carleton. On the twenty-third of June, 1777, he con-
veyed to the assembled Indians, in glowing terms, the
satisfaction and gratitude which their conduct had
evoked in King George's mind. He praised their
ardour to vindicate the authority of the Parent whom
they loved, and the constraint which they had put
upon their resentment in waiting for their Father's call
to arms. " Emulous in glory and in friendship," he
exclaimed, " we will endeavour reciprocally to give and
to receive examples. We will strive to imitate your
perseverance in enterprise, and your constancy to
resist hunger, weariness, and pain ; and, in return, it
will be our task to point out where it is nobler to spare
S6 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
than to revenge, — to discriminate degrees of guilt, to
chastise and not to destroy." In former wars, (the
orator went on to say,) Indians had held themselves
entitled to extirpate wherever they came ; but during
this expedition they must scrupulously obey the rules
of civilised warfare, and the dictates of the Christian
religion. In conformity with their customs they would
be allowed to take scalps from the slain, but not from
the wounded, nor even from the dying ; and aged men,
women, children, and prisoners were to be held sacred
from the knife and the hatchet. Within those limits,
and under these reservations, they might give full scope
to their outraged loyalty and their righteous indigna-
tion. " Warriors ! " Burgoyne exclaimed, " you are
free ! Go forth in the might and valour of your cause !
Strike at the common enemies of Great Britain and
America ; — the disturbers of public order, peace, and
happiness ; the destroyers of commerce ; the parricides
of the State ! " The General's audience relished his
perorations, of which there were several in the course
of the speech ; and the style of his address, as trans-
mitted through the mouth of an official interpreter, was
a flattering imitation of the rhetoric employed in their
own palavers. The duty of reply devolved upon an old
Iroquois chief, who, determined not to be outdone in
the practice of his national art by a stranger and a
pale-face, assured lUngoyne that the warriors there
present recognised in his accents the voice of their
common Father beyond the Great Lake, and that their
hatchets had been sharpened on the whet-stone of
their filial affections.
Burgoyne transmitted to England a full and faithful
report of these proceedings, which was very ill received
by London society. His speech to the Indians shocked
humane and homely people ; and the least fastidious man
of the world did not care to be publicly reminded that
the English army was assisted by aUies with whom our
Government kept a running account for scalps, and
who required to be solemnly and specifically warned
BURGOYNE'S PROCLAMATION Sy
against the practice of murdering and mutilating chil-
dren and women. The same packet carried home
copies of a proclamation which Burgoyne addressed
from his camp before Ticonderoga to the inhabitants
of the revolted colonies. His parliamentary colleagues,
— who knew, and did not like, his style of rhetoric, —
had already detected his hand in State Papers which
professed to come from General Gage's pen.^ Bur-
goyne, now that he himself was in command, seemed
determined that there should be no mistake about the
authorship of his own manifesto ; for it was prefaced
by a pompous list of his titles and employments which
must have sounded exquisitely absurd when declaimed
by George Selwyn from the hearth-rug at Brooks's
Club. The threats of condign vengeance, set forth in
the last two paragraphs, were regarded by all rational
statesmen as monstrously impolitic ; ^ and the whole
composition was a mass of inflated and over-polished
verbiage of the sort which always, and never more
than in Burgoyne's own generation, has been repugnant
to the English taste. " Have you," (said Horace Wal-
pole,) "read Burgoyne's rhodomontade, in which he
almost promises to cross America in a hop, step, and
a jump ? He has sent over, too, a copy of his talk with
the Indians, which they say is still more supernatural.
^ George Germaine to General Irwin; July 26, 1775. TJig Drayton
House Manuscripts ; Page 136.
'^ " In consciousness of Christianity, my Royal Master's clemency, and
the honour of soldiership, I have dwelt upon this invitation, and wished
for more persuasive terms to give it impression. And let not the people
be led to disregard it by considering their distance from the immediate
situation of my camp ! I have but to give stretch to the Indian forces
under my direction, (and they amount to thousands,) to overtake the
hardened enemies of Great Britain and America ; and I consider them
the same, wherever they may lurk."
"If notwithstanding these endeavours, and sincere inclinations, the
frenzy of hostility should remain, I trust I shall stand acquitted in the
eyes of God and men in denouncing and executing the vengeance of
the State against the wilful outcasts. The messengers of justice and
wrath await them in the field ; and devastation, famine, and every con-
comitant horror that a reluctant but indispensable prosecution of military
duty must occasion, will bar the way to their return."
88 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
I own I prefer General Howe's taciturnity, who at least,
if he does nothing, does not break his word."^ ThaV
was the opinion very generally held by men who could
recall the brief and bluff terms in which Lord Chatham's
commanders on sea and land, — after a battle, but not
before it, — were accustomed to announce their vic-
tories ; and whose grandfathers had known nothing
about the projected movement against the lines at
Blenheim until they were informed by the Duke of
Marlborough that Monsieur Tallard, and two other
French generals, were sitting in his coach.
Burgoyne's proclamation was, of course, even worse
liked by Americans than by P^nglishmen ; and in
America his unlucky production fell into adroit and
merciless hands. Francis Hopkinson had been sent
from the Jerseys as a delegate to Congress; and he
eventually mounted the Judicial Bench. A sturdy
Revolutionist, he was less a politician or a lawyer than
a man of letters, with a passion for modelling his style
upon the British classics. He began with pretty trifles
in the manner of Herrick and Withers ; his sea-ballads
and hunting songs have all a far-away echo of ancient
and very familiar strains; and, when he first took to
prose, he caught the spirit of the shorter pieces that
emanated from the pens of Swift and Arbuthnot. The
time now arrived when this talent for imitation became
of real service to the political cause which Francis
Hopkinson had espoused ; for he dashed off, and put
into circulation, a burlesque reply to the English
general's prcK^lamation. That clever and biting parody
pursued the original manifesto all over the Confederacy,
and had the double effect of making Americans very
angry, and exceedingly contemptuous of Burgoyne's
long-winded menaces.^
^ Horace Walpole to the Countess of Ossory ; Strawberry Hill, Aug. 8,
1777.
■^ Professor Tyler remarks that Francis Hopkinson's satire everywhere
excited roars of laughter "over a situation in which there was much to
give alarm, but with respect to which mere laughter was an antidote
to popular panic." Literary History of the American Revolution \ Chap-
ter XXX.
SCHUYLER AND GATES 89
The troops of the Royal army were well furnished
at all points, and united in willing obedience to their
leader ; but in the opposite camp there was confusion,
improvidence, dissension, and mutual distrust. During
the year 1777, and the first six months of 1778, while
mihtary operations of cardinal importance to the
destiny of America were in progress, the American
government was passing through a political and admin-
istrative crisis of a nature which has seldom failed to
occur, sooner or later, in the course of every great
revolutionary struggle in modern or ancient times.
The question at issue was the claim of the politicians
to appoint and remove the generals, and to control the
war ; and the circumstances under which that claim
was raised, pursued, and finally set at rest, supply
a great deal of unedifying, and rather disagreeable,
reading. The dispute was fought out within the walls
of Congress amidst much ill-feeling, and some indif-
ference to the laws of honour. Disproportioned
ambitions, and ignoble rivalries, too frequently ruled
the hour. But those sentiments exhaled themselves
in debates across the floor, and cabals in the Committee-
rooms ; and in captious, and occasionally somewhat
vulgar-minded, letters which certain distinguished states-
men had much better have left unwritten. America
contrived to get through her difficulties without the
rioting, the bloodshed, and the violations of the or-
dinary law, which have prevailed at similar conjunc-
tures in the history of other famous countries. Phil-
adelphia, at the very height of the controversy, was
a much quieter city than the London of 1648 and
1653, or than Paris in the Reign of Terror. There
was no brawling in her streets ; no proscriptions, or
judicial murders ; no suspension of the civil constitu-
tion by the armed hand of the soldier. The successful
and peaceable solution of the problem was primarily
due to the calm self-control, and the patient tenacity
of purpose, which were exhibited by George Washing-
ton ; and yet even those qualities would have failed of
90 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
their effect if there had not been plenty of good sense
and sterling patriotism in the community at large.
The view of the politicians was very emphatically
stated by Doctor Benjamin Rush, a delegate from
Pennsylvania. '' I have heard," said Rush, '* the Con-
gress called a Republic. I love to realise the idea, and
I hope it will inspire us with the virtuous principles of
Republican Governments. One of the most powerful
and happy commonwealths in the world, Rome, called
her general officers from the plough, and paid no regard
to rank, service, or seniority. The case is different with
us. A general may lose a battle or a province, and we
possess no power to recall or to displace him." ^ That
speech was an oblique stroke at the Commander-in-
Chief, who had all along been a mark for civilian
jealousy. But the lustre of Trenton was not as yet
dimmed by failure or defeat ; and Washington, for
some while to come, remained too strong to be directly
and personally assailed. The brunt of the attack was
concentrated on a more defenceless head.
The Northern department, of which Albany was the
military capital, had from the first been under the
command of Major General Philip Schuyler. Schuyler's
valour and conduct, while he was still a young captain
of militia, met with signal recognition on more than one
memorable occasion. In September 1755, when the
colonists had gained their brilliant and unassisted vic-
tory on the banks of Lake George, he was sent home in
charge of the French prisoners ; and, after General
Abercromby's defeat at Ticonderoga, he was chosen
for the melancholy and honourable duty of conveying
Viscount Howe's body to Albany for burial. But his
health failed early in life ; and, by the time the Revo-
lutionary War broke out, he was able to take the field
only during short, and very uncertain, intervals. In
the capacity of a military administrator, however,
though less able and experienced than Washington, he
1 Debate of February 19, 1777. Historical Notes of Dr. Benjamin
Rushy extracted from his Note-book by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell : 1903.
SCHUYLER AND GATES 9I
was as industrious and unselfish as the Commander-in-
Chief himself. Schuyler loved his country sincerely
and singly, and he gave her the whole of his time and
strength, besides great quantities of his money, and, (for
many years together,) all his peace of mind and his
happiness. He was fiercely calumniated while alive,
and since his death he has met with some unfair
treatment at the hand of history; but his good fame
has survived all assaults, whether contemporaneous or
posthumous; and he now is almost universally recog-
nised as an honest and devoted friend to America.
Schuyler had the supreme misfortune of being
heartily disliked in Boston ; and a statesman or a
general of the Revolution, who was out of favour with
the Bostonians, had as small a chance of making a
good figure in history as an Anglo-Saxon or Plantage-
net monarch who had offended the clergy and the
monastic chroniclers. The quarrel was of old date.
For many years before the American Revolution the
governments of New York, and of Massachusetts Bay,
had been engaged in an angry controversy over their
respective rights to the territory which is now Vermont,
and which then was known by the title of " The Hamp-
shire Grants." On more than one occasion very high-
handed action was taken by the authorities of New
York ; and Schuyler, as the leading citizen in that
colony, became identified with proceedings which the
whole of New England rightly condemned as unjust
and tyrannical.^ When the Revolutionary War com-
menced, the standing antipathy between the Northern
and the Middle provinces soon made itself felt in
Schuyler's ranks. Massachusetts and Connecticut, —
thickly peopled, and situated near at hand, — formed
a natural source of supply, whence the army stationed
at Albany drew most of its reinforcements ; but the
General, and the great majority of his soldiers, were
1 Life of General Philip Schuyler, by Bayard Tuckerman ; Chapter 3.
The Ufe and Times of Philip Schuyler^ by Benson J. Lossing, LL.D. ;
Chapter 12.
92 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
prejudiced against each other from the outset, and a
more intimate acquaintance only served to embitter
their relations. They eyed him with suspicion as an
aristocrat ; and, from the intellectual elevation of born
New Englanders, they looked down on him as a slow-
witted Dutchman. He, on his side, held them in poor
esteem as bad drills and great talkers, devoid of any
germ of deference for social rank, and incapable of
military discipline and subordination.^ Schuyler con-
fided his troubles to Washington, who gave him both
sympathy and wise counsel in a series of noble letters,
which are written for all time, and may still be read
with comfort and advantage by any servant of the
public whose burden, for the moment, seems to him
heavier than he can bear.^ The seed, in this case, fell
upon good soil. " I can easily conceive," (such was
Schuyler's answer,) " that my difficulties are only a faint
semblance of yours. Yes, my General, I will try to
copy your bright example, and patiently and steadily
persevere in that line which alone can promise the
wishcd-for reformation."
Schuyler's expressions of regret were genuine, and
his pledge of amendment was faithfully kept ; but the
people who were at variance with him did not come of
a repenting, or a quickly forgiving, race. The New
England militia repaired to his assistance tardily and
reluctantly ; when they arrived in camp they minded
their duties little, and their manners less ; and they
went back to their homes in crowds without any regard
for the requirements of the service, and on very flimsy
pretexts.^ The New England delegates to the Congress
^ The case is impartially handled by a conscientious and fair-minded
New Englander, the chaplain to a regiment of Connecticut militia. A
passage from his correspondence, which deserves reading, has been given
in the First Appendix to this volume.
2 Washington to Schuyler ; Cambridge, 5th and 24th December, 1775.
A fine extract from a third letter is quoted in the fourth chapter of
Tuckerman's Life of Schuyler.
^ '* Nothing," wrote Schuyler, ** can surpass the impatience of the
troops from the New England colonies to get to their fire-sides. Near
SCHUYLER AND GATES 93
at Philadelphia, (and in the long run that proved to be
a serious matter for Schuyler,) were his ill-wishers and
detractors almost to a man. Those delegates were the
main strength of the anti-military party which Samuel
Adams led, and which John Adams, with many self-
questionings, fitfully supported. The better people
among them, when they thwarted and hampered Gen-
eral Schuyler, justified themselves by the theory that
they were asserting their own legitimate authority over
the army and its chiefs ; but the meaner spirits were
perfectly well aware that, under the guise of concern
for the public interests, they were satiating a personal
grudge. They discovered an apt instrument for their
purpose in a man who is unfavourably remembered by
all patriotic Americans, because he was the centre of
mischievous intrigues, and the hero of shabby scandals,
which constitute the most unseemly and notorious
episode in the story of their national Revolution.
Crown Point had already been recovered by the Brit-
ish arms, and Ticonderoga was now the frontier fortress
of the rebellion. The garrison was commanded by Major-
General Horatio Gates, — as garrisons are commanded
by an officer who seldom, or never, can find leisure to
be at his post. Gates was qualified by nature to make
his way, fast and far, in any profession where advance-
ment goes by favour. He has been truly described as
" comely in person, mild in disposition, and courteous in
manner, except when roused to anger or influenced by
spite, when he sometimes became very violent."^ Under
a European monarchy he would have been assiduous in
his attendance at the levee and in the ante-chamber ;
and, in a Congress-governed nation, he was a soldier of
the lobby rather than of the skirmish-line. During that
three hundred of them arrived a few days ago, unable to do any duty ;
but as soon as I administered that grand specific, a discharge, they
instantly acquired health ; and, rather than be detained a few days to
cross Lake George, they undertook a march from here of two hundred
miles with the greatest alacrity."
^ The Ainerican RevoluHon, by John Fiske ; Chapter 6.
94 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
war of small, and often half-trained, armies, fighting up
and down a wild and broken country, the leaders on
both sides made it a point of honour to set an example of
personal valour, and, (in case of need,) even of headlong
audacity. Cornwallis and Percy, Arnold, Stark, and
Washington never spared themselves in action ; but it is
credibly stated that Gates, throughout the whole of his
Northern campaign, did not so much as hear a bullet
whistle. During the siege of Boston, Gates was Adjutant
General in the camp at Cambridge ; and he used his
opportunities; for he was at great pains to ingratiate him-
self with the New England officers and soldiers, and he
established an intimate, and most profitable, alliance with
New England politicians. Congress elected him a Major
General : and in June 1776 he was sent to the Northern
frontier as second in authority under General Schuyler.
As soon as Gates was installed at Ticonderoga he set him-
self deUberately down to the business of undermining,
overthrowing, and supplanting his superior officer. For
three months to come he despatched by every post very
private letters addressed to New England members of
Congress, filled with charges and innuendoes against his
chief, and with artful allusions to the popularity which he
himself enjoyed among those intelligent and liberty-loving
New England militia-men who were so acute in discrim-
inating between a bad and a good commander. When
November arrived, he applied for leave of absence on the
plea of weak health, and followed his own correspond-
ence to Baltimore, where Congress then was sitting.
In the course of his journey he reached the banks of
the Delaware River, and there fell in with an unex-
pected and unique opportunity of proving his worth
as a valiant soldier. Washington, surprised, but heartily
pleased, when a full Major General dropped from the
clouds into his camp at the critical instant of the cam-
paign, invited his guest to lead the right-hand column
in the attack upon the Hessians at Trenton. It was a
chance for which Anthony Wayne, who was left in care
of the sick and starving troops at Ticonderoga through
SCHUYLER AND GATES 95
the whole of that cruel winter, would have given ten
years of his life, and his pay for ever.^ But Gates had
come South to fight his own battles, and no others. He
declined to give Washington the benefit of his assistance ;
he pushed on for Baltimore ; and two months afterwards
he obsequiously followed Congress back to Philadelphia.
In both cities he worked pertinaciously and insidiously;
urging his own claims, and inspiring a course of action
against General Schuyler which did not stop short of
downright persecution. Gates at length received the
reward of his importunity ; for he was ordered by a Reso-
lution of Congress to go immediately to Ticonderoga, and
there to assume independent command of the field-army.
That vote was resented by Schuyler as a slight on
his services, and a stain upon his character ; and his
cause was warmly and loyally espoused by the citizens
of his native State. The New York Convention, then
and there, elected him a delegate to Congress, where he
rose in his place to insist upon a public and official
inquiry into the whole of his past conduct. An honest
man, who has suffered an unmerited injury, is his own
best advocate. Schuyler's dignified attitude, and plainly
told story, made a deep impression on his senatorial
colleagues ; his merits were handsomely acknowledged ;
and he was once again definitely invested with absolute
military control over the entire Northern department.
He repaired to his province with all possible haste ; but
six months of invaluable time had been consumed in
these barren wrangles. June had come ; and, before
that month ended, Burgoyne's advance-guard was al-
ready within a few miles of the American out-posts.
Schuyler, and his staff-officers, were sadly behindhand
with their work at the base of operations ; and at
Ticonderoga, in the extreme front, all the arrangements
for the reception of an enemy were in utter and hope-
1 The relative estimate in which Wayne held money, and military
glory, was well-known to his contemporaries. Long after this date John
Adams saw him upon his return from a successful warlike operation.
•'This man's feelings," he wrote, "must be worth a guinea a minute."
g6 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
less disorder and neglect. For General Gates, when h^
left Philadelphia in triumph at the close of March, had
returned towards, but not to, his post of duty ; and he
still was lingering at Albany when the news reached
him that the Central Government had gone back upon
its previous decision, and that Schuyler was again his
commanding officer. He at once threw patriotism to
the winds, and posted off to Congress, boiling with in-
dignation, and intent upon calling the faithless Assem-
bly to account for his disappointed hopes, whatever
might be the consequences to his own career, or to the
safety of his threatened country.
It was a sordid and repulsive story; but an author
who kept it in the back-ground of his narrative would
be no true historian of the American Revolution. The
ugliest feature in the whole business was the indifference
displayed by General Gates to the misery of his soldiers.
While he was cajoling influential politicians in the
warmer latitude of Baltimore, the men whom he had
left behind him on the frost-bound shores of Lake
Champlain were in a forlorn and wretched plight. The
small-pox, which they brought back with them from
Canada, had never been eradicated ; dysentery was in
all their quarters; and pulmonary diseases were preva-
lent under such conditions of want, and exposure, that an
attack of pneumonia was a sentence of death. The
national treasury was so nearly empty, and the contents
of the national magazines had run so low, that troops,
whose commander did not press their claims hotly and
persistently, were sure to come off very badly in the
competition for money and supplies. If Benedict
Arnold had been in the place of Horatio Gates, the
garrison under his charge would have got the best of
what was producible, poor and scanty as that best
might be. But the unfortunate people at Ticonderoga,
with no one to champion their interests, had " nothing
but flour and bad beef, with no beds or bedding for the
TICONDEROGA
97
sick to lie on or under, other than their own clothes ; *' ^
and in that sorrowful camp the sick outnumbered the
hale. Nine hundred pairs of shoes, and no more, were
served out in the course of the winter ; and a third part
of the army was doing duty barefoot with a thermom-
eter below zero. ** It cannot," (so a trustworthy eye-wit-
ness passionately declared,) **be viewed in a milder
light than black murder. The poor creatures are now,
(what's left alive,) laying on the cold ground in poor
thin tentSj and some none at all, and many down with
pleuris]^ I paid a visit to the sick yesterday to a small
house called the hospital. The first object presented to
my eyes was one man laying dead at the door ; then,
inside, two more dead, with two living between them."^
So m.atters stood at the close of November ; and, when
May arrived, there was still no improvement or increase
in the daily ration ; no m.edical remedies except the ap-
proach of more genial weather ; and no reinforcements
for an army which by this time had dwindled to the
p>'jportions of a handful. Nothing remained except the
iag-end of that assemblage of regiments which had gone
through two unsuccessful campaigns, two severe winters,
and a whole series of deadly epidemics.
Schuyler, at the eleventh hour, did his utmost to re-
pair the neghgences of the past ; but the season for
preparation was drawing to a close, and the enemy was
already at the gate. He resumed his functions at
Albany on the eighth of June ; and on the fifteenth of
the same month he learned from a captured British spy
that Burgoyne's army was concentrated on the frontier,
and that Seneca warriors and Tory partisans were
mustering at the springs of the Mohawk River. The
defence of Ticonderoga was committed to Major General
St. Clair, the best of Schuyler's Brigadiers ; if such a
^ Colonel Anthony Wayne to the Council of Safety of Pennsylvania :
December 4, 1776. "Death," he wrote ten days afterwards, " is daily
making dreadful havock amongst us Pennsylvanians. I have buried
out of my own Regiment, since you left this ground, upwards of fifty
men."
2 Letter in American Archives of December 1776.
VOL. IV. H
98 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
title could properly be given to officers each of whose
brigades would have made a poor show beside the war
strength of a European regiment. St. Clair had no
light burden upon him ; for the attention of every news-
writer, on either side of the Atlantic, was fixed upon
the stronghold for whose safety he was now responsible.
Ticonderoga had a varied, and a most sensational, mili-
tary record. In July 1758 it had been attacked by a
large force of British regulars and colonial militia,
rashly and clumsily led by General James Abercromby,
who was a soldier of a very much inferior type to his
namesake Ralph. Montcalm repulsed that force from
before the walls with appalling slaughter ; but the French
were eventually frightened out of Ticonderoga by the
advance of Lord Amherst at the head of one of those
powerful and well-appointed armies with which, like a
prudent commander, he always preferred to march.
Early in the Revolution, just three weeks after Lexing-
ton, the fortress was surprised and captured, without a
blow or a shot, by Ethan Allen ; — under the special
grace, (according to' his own account,) of the Great
Jehovah, and with the more mundane, but very effectual,
co-operation of Benedict Arnold. The event caused an
extraordinary outburst of pride and gratification through-
out the entire Confederacy ; and patriotic Americans
thenceforward held it as an article of faith that Ticon-
deroga was impregnable against all assailants who were
less enterprising, and less dear to Providence, than
themselves.
Ticonderoga was situated on the Western shore of the
fork where Lake Champlain branches Southward into
two long and narrow gulfs. The contour of the ground
and water closely resembled the lower end of Lake
Como, and almost rivalled that classical district in
beauty of scenery.^ The Americans had diligently
^ " Lake George is the most picturesque thing I saw in the United
States. Three of our English Lakes, placed on end, would be something
like it in extent and scenery." Herbert Spencer's Autobiography ;
Chapter 62. Lake George was the Westernmost of the two Southern
branches.
TICONDEROGA 99
applied themselves to extend, — and, as they fondly
imagined, to strengthen, — the fortifications. The result
of their labours conspicuously illustrated both the
merits, and the faults, of their military engineering ;
for the work was admirably executed, and ignorantly
planned. On the Eastern bank, immediately opposite
Ticonderoga, they had erected an exceedingly elaborate
citadel, on which they conferred their favourite, and
not very distinctive, appellation of " Fort Indepen-
dence." 1 Across the breadth of the lake, between the
two fortresses, they had built a bridge of vast span and
solid fabric, overcoming with audacious ingenuity all
the mechanical difficulties of their task. If such a
work had been constructed by Julius Caesar's army,
the description of it, to the distraction of modern
schoolboys, would have filled whole chapters of his
Commentaries. And yet all the trouble expended on
Ticonderoga had been worse than wasted ; for the
circuit of the intrenchments was now so large as to
require a garrison of ten thousand men. St. Clair's
troops, all told, — and many of them were not worth
telling, -— amounted to only a quarter of that number.
Eight out of every nine of his privates were unprovided
with bayonets ; the disheartening effect of which cir-
cumstance on the defenders of a position, before the
days of the breech-loader, could hardly be over-rated.
And, again, the nature of the locality was such that a
besieger, who kept his eyes about him, might have the
place at his mercy without ever running the risks of an
assault by storm. At the Northern point of the prom-
ontory, which divided the two branches of the lake, a
rugged acclivity, then known as Sugar Hill, rose six
hundred feet above the surface of the water. If
Burgoyne's heavy guns were planted on the summit,
Ticonderoga would from that moment forward be
untenable. A small redoubt on the top of the crag
1 Within a twelvemonth of the Fourth of July, 1 776, there already were
no fewer than three important fortresses of that name on the line between
Crown Point and Manhattan Island.
H2
ICX) THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
would have been worth, many times over, all the costly
and pretentious additions that had recently been made
to the defences of the neighbourhood ; but the American
generals, after taking the matter into their consideration,
had pronounced Sugar Hill inaccessible to artillery.
The mountain might have preserved that reputation
until the end of time if the British general, and his
principal advisers, had been less capable masters of
their profession. The Royal fleet reached Crown
Point towards the close of June ; our troops were dis-
embarked ; our ships of war, small and great, were
cleared for action ; and Ticonderoga, with all the out-
lying forts, was expeditiously, and most skilfully,
invested both by land and water. Those splendid and
easy successes, which almost immediately ensued, must
be scored to the credit of Burgoyne himself ; although
he generously confessed in his despatch that he had
been greatly indebted to the zeal and ability of an
officer who was already a celebrated veteran. The
campaigns of the Peninsular War and of Waterloo, more
recent and on a larger scale, have relegated to com-
parative obscurity many distinguished soldiers of the
generation which preceded WelHngton ; and, among
those who have so suffered, very few are more worthy
of remembrance than General William Phillips of the
Royal Artillery. Oblivion, in his case, is a double in-
justice, because he was an honoured member of a
branch of the service which always does its duty, and
seldom meets with its deserts. Phillips was keenly
alive to everything that concerned the interests, the
renown, and the popularity of his corps. During peace
he ruled with a light and steady hand ; and, in an age of
duels and dissipation, the officers of the Royal Artillery
lived together like a well-ordered family. His exploits
in war were marked by striking originality of concep-
tion, and vivacious daring in execution. At Minden
the valour of the British infantry would have been ill
seconded by either of the auxiliary arms, had it not
been for Captain Phillips ; for he remained a captain,
TICONDEROGA lOI
while Lord George Sackville was already a general.
The story of his exertions, while he was bringing up
the guns at that supreme moment, partakes of the
mythical ; for he was popularly believed to have
broken a whole armful of walking-canes over the backs
of his draught-horses. It would have been well if the
stoutest of them had on that same day, in another
quarter of the field, been vigorously applied to a certain
pair of human shoulders. After the battle Prince
Ferdinand of Brunswick, exercising his privilege as a
royal personage, requested the young artilleryman to
accept a thousand crowns as a testimony of his admi-
ration and his gratitude. All through the subsequent
operations in Germany, Phillips made a point of showing
that, however fast Lord Granby and his cavalry might
travel, they never would leave the cannon far behind.
He trotted the last five miles of road on the way to
Warburg, and mended his pace as he swung his battery
into a position where it exercised a decisive influence
on the result of that fiery and impetuous conflict. It
was the first occasion, according to both French and
English authorities, when artillery had come into
action at the gallop. And now, in the heart of the
American wilderness, his chance had arrived for
proving that he was as much at home in a siege as
in a battle.^
Sugar Hill was carefully explored by Lieutenant
Twiss, who was Burgoyne's Engineer in command,
although a lieutenant still ; for promotion then went by
favour, and favour seldom smiled upon the working
officer. Many years afterwards the place was visited
by Benson Lossing, a pilgrim who never allowed him-
self to be turned back from any spot which figured in
the history of the Revolution. He found the flank of
the mountain such an agglomeration of broken rocks, —
1 Carlyle, in his Frederic the Greats makes honourable mention of
Phillips ; and there is much about him in many books which now are
little read. Thorough justice is done to him, as to countless others, in
the Dictionary of National Biography.
102 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
and so encumbered with fallen timber, and with a matted
tangle of the creepers which in America are known by
the generic name of vines, — that the difficulties of the
ascent proved almost insuperable.^ These obstacles,
however, did not baffle or discourage Burgoyne's
officer of Engineers ; and, on his return, he promised
that he and his sappers would undertake to make a
road which, though no highway, would be good enough
for General Phillips when it was a question of bringing
artillery to the front. A day and a night were spent
in fierce labour, and in honourable emulation between
fatigue-parties from the various regiments ; and, when
morning broke, the British were in occupation of the
summit. Our officers, from that coign of vantage,
searched with their telescopes every angle of every
hostile redoubt ; noted whether its embrasures were
armed with cannon ; and counted its defenders, — which
in no case was an affair of very many minutes. Both
Fort Ticonderoga and Fort Independence lay within
range of a plunging fire from the twenty-four pounders,
and the eight-inch howitzers, with which the peak had
been garnished. Phillips, then and there, rechristened
his hill by the significant title of Mount Defiance ; and
the people of the United States, with their wonted
respect for historical associations, have retained that
name till this present hour.'^
St. Clair had hitherto been in great heart, and in
high spirits ; for he entertained that delusive hope
which, ever since Bunker's Hill, had been the cherished
ideal of all American commanders. He looked forward
to the opportunity of repelling a general assault, de-
livered in broad dayhght up an open glacis, and of
disabhng the British army by the leisurely fire of his
^ Benson Lossing's Pictorial Field Book of the Revolution ; Volume I.,
Chapter 6.
2 Anburey, in his thirty-third letter, says that Lieutenant Twiss
"reported the hill to have the entire command of the works and
buildings, both at Ticonderoga and Mount Independence, at about four-
teen hundred yards from the former, and fifteen hundred from the
latter."
TICONDEROGA IO3
own marksmen from behind their secure intrenchments.
On the thirtieth of June he assured Schuyler by letter
that, if the enemy attacked Ticonderoga, they would go
back faster than they came ; ^ but at dawn on the fifth
of July he was called from his quarters to see the brow
of the mountain glowing with scarlet uniforms, and the
muzzles of siege-guns protruding over the edge of the
platform. It was a poor awakening for an Ameri-
can general on the morrow of Independence Day.
St. Clair discerned at a glance that the fortress in his
charge was doomed, and that his own chance in life
was gone. " To remain, would be to lose his army ; to
retreat, would be to lose his character ; " ^ and it is to
his praise that he adopted the honest and unselfish
course, and pursued it with all the forethought and
precaution which his desperate situation admitted.
The slow day went by in enforced idleness, for every
movement within the American camp was exposed to
the full view of a watchful adversary ; but, so soon as
night fell, the work of evacuation began in earnest.
More than two hundred barges were laden with stores
and baggage, and despatched up the eastern branch of
the lake, under the convoy of five armed galleys, the
remnant of Benedict Arnold's ill-fated squadron. The
troops on the western shore were marched across to
Fort Independence ; and then the united garrisons, un-
detected and unmolested, made good their retreat as
far as Hubbardtown, which lay near twenty miles to the
south of Ticonderoga.
The most had been made of the darkness ; but at
sunrise the British were astir on land and lake. Bur-
goyne had inculcated upon those around him the
necessity for vigilance and promptitude; and his ex-
1 On the same day one of Schuyler's aides-de-camp, who had been
kept at Ticonderoga by sickness, wrote to his general as follows : " I
cannot but esteem myself fortunate that indisposition prevented my
returning with you, as it has given me an opportunity of being present
at a battle in which I promise myself the pleasure of seeing our army
flushed with victory."
2 Lossing's Life and Tifnes of Philip Schuyler \ Chapter 10.
104 ^-^^ AMERICAN REVOLUTION
hortations were obeyed when the hour for action came.
The Americans had placed great reliance on the com-
pHcated and ponderous mass of impediments which
blocked the channel between their two fortresses ; and
they set forth on their voyage in the firm belief that
pursuit by water was impossible. They had forgotten
how English seamen can work even when there are
grape-shot and musketry to distract their attention ;
and on the present occasion our sailors had no worse
danger to fear than a wetting, and no less powerful an
incentive than the prospect of grappling with an enemy
whom they had twice encountered with success, and
whom they were resolved never again to dismiss half
beaten. They cut through the protecting boom ; they
ascertained the position of two among the enormous
sunken piers ; they towed away one of the vast rafts
which, by dint of incredible labour, had been chained
and riveted together into a monumental bridge ; and
in half an hour they broke a passage through barriers
which, (to employ Burgoyne's own words,) the Ameri-
cans had been labouring for ten months to render
impenetrable. The Royal George and the Inflexible,
— a pair of ships which were of a size to be dignified
with the rating of frigates, — moved proudly through the
opening ; and, preceded by the swiftest of the gun-
boats, with their slower consorts crowding all sail
in their wake, by three in the afternoon they bore
down upon the hostile flotilla. The Americans were at
anchor in South Bay, towards the farther end of the
estuary, where they possessed a stockaded fort, and a
small naval station. There was no escape for them ;
and it was a holocaust rather than a combat. Two
war-galleys forthwith struck their flags, and the other
three were blown up by their own crews ; eleven score
vessels of burden were sunk, burned, or taken ; and
the Americans themselves, before they retired into the
woods, set fire to the whole collection of storehouses,
and saw-mills, and forges, and repairing-sheds. The
flame caught the dry forest-trees amidst which the
TICONDEROGA 105
buildings stood, and the hill-side above was almost
immediately in a blaze. An English officer, who
arrived upon the scene when the conflagration was at
its height, described it as the most tremendous spec-
tacle on which his eyes were ever set. There have been
grander fleets, and more extensive naval establishments,
than those by means of which Congress disputed the
mastery of Lake Champlain ; but none ever perished
in more picturesque and complete destruction. In the
official report of the catastrophe General Schuyler was
informed, frankly and comprehensively, that " not one
earthly thing was saved."
Burgoyne's people, meanwhile, were quite as active
and venturesome on another element ; and their victory
would have been equally overwhelming by land if the
wilderness had had a limit like the water. At the
first gleam of dawn General Fraser was informed that
Ticonderoga had been abandoned. He at once collected
a small body of armed men by the process of sweeping
together his line of pickets ; led them into the fort, and
planted the British colours upon the rampart ; and then,
'* leaving orders for the brigade to follow as soon as
they could accoutre," he hastened across the bridges,
and started southward on the track of the retiring
enemy.i A day's forced march under a broiling sun
brought him to Hubbardtown, where St. Clair had left
a strong rear-guard. At five o'clock the next morning
Fraser assailed the Americans, who were very advan-
tageously posted, and whom he did not out-number.
There ensued a hot and equal conflict, which was
Waterloo on an extremely minute scale ; for the com-
batants amounted to just one per cent of those who
fought upon that great occasion ; their respective losses
were exactly in the same proportion ; and the event was
finally decided by the appearance of a German force on
the right flank of the enemy. General Riedesel, who
^ The whole story is vigorously, and most circumstantially, told in
Burgoyne's despatch to Lord George Germaine.
I06 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
had ridden far in advance of his columns, stood by the
roadside fuming at their tardy arrival, and emitting a
string of imprecations in High Dutch which were not
unfamiliar to the ears of English veterans who had
taken part in Prince Ferdinand's battles. In the course
of an hour or two he laid hands on as many Bruns-
wickers and Hessians as made up a couple of companies ;
and he thereupon hurried them into action, drumming
and shouting, and singing battle hymns, and letting off
their muskets as fast as they could load and fire. When
Fraser heard them in the woods, making noise enough
for half-a-dozen battalions, he caught the spirit of the
movement, and gave the word for a charge. The British
attacked with the bayonet, and the Americans broke
and fled. A hundred and fifty of our soldiers had been
killed or wounded, and a score of our officers. Twice
as many Americans were left on the ground ; and Colonel
Francis, who had commanded them gallantly, and very
expertly, was slain. But that was a small part of their
losses. In the course of three days Burgoyne had cap-
tured a hundred and eighty of their cannon, all their
reserve tents, very considerable stores of provisions,
great herds of cattle, and a large quantity of ammuni-
tion. St. Clair's miHtiamen deserted him during the
retreat ; and when, with the rags and tatters of his
unfortunate garrison, he rejoined General Schuyler at
Fort Edward, the contagion of egotism and faint-hearted-
ness did not fail to infect the main army. Several New
England regiments chose that time, of all others, to
claim their dismissal, and march off in the direction of
their respective homes. Between the official capital of
New York State, and an invading force perfectly equipped
at all points, and flushed by conquest, there lay a poor
company of some three thousand men, unprovided
with artillery, and with no shelter from the weather;
enfeebled by illness ; depressed by failure ; and aban-
doned in the hour of peril by those very New Englanders
who, as politicians, had been the loudest advocates of
the Revolution, and the most prominent authors of the
TICONDEROGA IO7
war. That was a gloomy and inglorious week in the
calendar of the Republic.
Then came the golden hour of Burgoyne's career ;
for he now at last had something to write which every
one was sure to read, and which no one, who feared
to be called unpatriotic, would venture to criticise un-
favourably. He set himself down to narrate the events
of the preceding ten days at such a length that, if printed
in book-form, they would have filled half again as many
pages of an octavo volume. The despatch had merits.
Burgoyne's account of his operations was in all
respects accurate, and the services of his subordinates
were acknowledged with the gratitude which became a
chivalrous soldier ; but, all the same, he was ill advised
when he gave play to his talent for descriptive narrative.
If war was made up of nothing except brilHant and
unbroken successes, the story of it might safely be told,
even in an official despatch, with entire frankness and
graphic minuteness of detail. But a campaign seldom
passes without some reverse of fortune ; and, with such
a contingency present to his mind, the most eloquent
general, when writing for the information of the public
at home, does wisely in restricting himself to conven-
tional and colourless military phrases.
For the present, however, Burgoyne's countrymen,
without misgivings or forebodings, abandoned them-
selves freely to the feast of rhetoric which he had spread
before them. The narrative of his operations was printed
in a London Gazette of imposing volume ; ^ and the
extracts from his private letters, which were handed
round in society, deepened the favourable impression
created by his published despatch. Especial notice was
taken of the sentence in which the victorious general
informed a friend, who was likewise an officer of high
rank, that, to judge from the quality of their strategy,
^ " I heard to-day at Richmond that Julius Caesar Burgonius's Com-
mentaries are to be published in an extraordinary Gazette of three-and-
twenty pages in folio, to-morrow ; — a counterpart to the Iliad in a nut-
shell ! " Horace Walpole to the Countess of Ossory ; August 24, 1777.
I08 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
the rebels had no men of military science among themA
A contemporary historian relates that '* the joy and
exultation were extreme " among all politicians who
insisted upon the unqualified subjugation, and uncon-
ditional submission, of the colonies. He described how
" those contemptuous and most degrading charges which
had been made against Americans of their wanting the
resolution and abilities of men, even in the defence of
whatever was dear to them, were now repeated and
believed ; " and how the supporters of the Ministry, with
one accord, took pains to diffuse an opinion that the
war in effect was over.^ The success attending their
endeavours to set that idea afloat was indicated by a
proof which, in their generation, admitted of no gain-
saying ; for there was a sudden, and very perceptible,
turn in the political betting. Five to one began to be
laid against the recognition of American Independence,
which not long before, at any rate in Brooks's Club,
had been the subject of an even wager.^ The Stocks,
indeed, refused to rise, for the City was obstinately
sceptical on the subject of America; but the country
gentlemen in the House of Commons, — grasping at a
shadow, and dropping their substance, — were prepared
to vote whatever money Government might ask, in the
belief that one final and well-sustained effort would
crush the revolt, and usher in the halcyon hour when
they might lighten their own financial burdens by taxing
the vanquished colonies.
A still more credulous class of men accepted the
Ministerial view of the situation with avidity, and
sincere conviction. Loyalist exiles in England had
been full of hope ever since it became matter of common
knowledge that measures were on foot to encircle and
stifle the rebellion by a threefold movement upon
Albany. " The Tories here," (so one of them wrote
1 General Burgoyne's letter to General Hervey of July ii.
2 " History of Europe " in the Annual Register of 1777 ; chapter 8.
^London Evening Post; August 14, 1777. ^^^ betting book at
Brooks's; June 29, 1777.
TICONDEROGA IO9
from London in April,) *' believe the American game of
independency is nearly up. Nay, so very sure are
some, that there is no small talk of going off in
August." 1 A score of the refugees had engaged berths
in a packet for New York ; while twelve or fifteen others
chartered an armed vessel to convey themselves, and a
large consignment of merchandise, across the ocean, so
as to be on the spot when the Royal authority was
re-established, and the American market was once more
thrown open to English goods. It may well be believed
that, when August actually arrived, and brought with
it the news that Ticonderoga had fallen, the delight of
these poor people exceeded all reasonable bounds. No
doubts or qualms as to the conclusive nature of the
British successes existed within the precincts of the
royal Court. The King ran into his wife's room crying
out that he had beaten all the Americans ; ^ and he
forthwith empowered Lord George Germaine to promise
Burgoyne a Knight Commandership of the Bath, and to
assure him that more substantial marks of favour were
soon to follow. Burgoyne, most fortunately for himself,
had lodged his interests in safe hands when he sailed
from England. He was represented at home by the
Earl of Derby, who knew his inmost thoughts, and was
connected with him by many and close ties.^ Lord
Derby, in terms of deep respect, and dutiful gratitude
for the Royal goodness, informed the Secretary of State
that Burgoyne was known to cherish strong objections
against the proposed honour " from whim, caprice, or
some other motive." The nature of that motive has
been disputed, and cannot now be ascertained ; but
Lord Derby's prudence was beyond all question.
1 Samuel Curwen to the Revd. Isaac Smith ; 23 Brompton Row,
Kensington, April 6, 1777.
2 The Last Journals of Horace Walpole \ Aug. 22, 1777.
^ Burgoyne had been the schoolfellow, and life-long friend, of Lord
Derby's father ; he had married Lord Derby's aunt ; and he now sate in
Parliament for a Lancashire borough where the Stanley influence was
very powerful.
no THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Example had shown that generals in America had
reason to dread, rather than to welcome, a premature
reward. Sir William Howe's red ribbon had been sent
from Windsor in consequence of the victory on Long
Island; and it reached New York just in time for the
defeat at Trenton.
CHAPTER XXXI
FORT EDWARD. THE AMERICAN FOREST. BENNINGTON.
FORT STANWIX
The most sanguine anticipations of a speedy and
crushing British victory would have been justified in
the eyes of almost any military man by the outward
aspect of Schuyler's army. He had been instructed to
rely upon Massachusetts as his main source of strength ;
and Massachusetts had failed him at the critical
moment. One county in that State had sent twelve
hundred men to the front ; and nine hundred of these
took their departure, and made their way home,
spreading panic and suspicion through their native
villages.^ Of the contingent from another county,
which had marched into camp five hundred strong,
only thirty officers and sergeants, and about the same
number of privates, now remained. Schuyler had
seventeen or eighteen hundred Continental linesmen ;
and a thousand New York militiamen, out of twice as
many, had graciously consented to stay under arms for
three more weeks in consideration of the fact that their
own province was at present the seat of war. Cannons
were lying about in the grass ; but he had no gun-
carriages whatsoever, and only five rounds of powder
and ball for each of his muskets. Tents there were
none, and not enough intrenching tools, and far too few
camp-kettles to cook the food. Almost everything was
lacking in Schuyler's army; but the general of that
army was not wanting to himself. It is difficult to see
how any man, under that trying ordeal, could have
1 "The most aggravated circumstance of all is that many soldiers are
coming home pretending that they were far pursued by the enemy.**
General Heath to Washington ; Boston, July i6, 1777.
Ill
112 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
displayed sounder judgment or more effective industry.
For the provision of ordnance-stores, and other material
of war, he was dependent upon the ill-will, the apathy,
and the financial poverty of the central government ;
but the supplies of victuals were largely drawn from
his own neighbourhood, where he was extraordinarily
beloved ; and where his private credit, unsparingly
pledged when it was a question of his soldiers having
sufficient food, commanded much more confidence than
those oblong slips of Treasury paper which called them-
selves dollars, but which already had fallen in pur-
chasing value below the level of five-and-twenty cents.
Schuyler appealed for assistance, as in duty bound,
to Congress, to the administrative departments at
Philadelphia, and to the representative assemblies of
New England ; and, with more expectation of a satis-
factory response, he addressed himself to powerful
servants of the state whose respect he enjoyed, and
whose patriotism and public spirit were known to him
from of old. He wrote often, and urgently, to Jonathan
Trumbull of Connecticut ; to General Heath, then in
military command of Massachusetts ; and to George
Clinton, who, in the nick of time, had been elected
Governor of New York State. And, as his prime
reliance, he placed the interests of himself and his army,
frankly and unreservedly, in the hands of George
Washington, whom, over and over again, he had man-
fully and loyally supported when Washington himself
was in the direst straits.^ While awaiting succour
from without, Schuyler employed his existing resources,
vigorously and cleverly, on a course of action sug-
gested to him by that intimate knowledge of the
locality which he had gained during a busy lifetime.
He drove off the sheep and cattle, and carted away or
1 " I have indeed written to Springfield," (so Schuyler told Washing-
ton,) " for the cannon which were there. But the answer I got was that
they were all ordered another way. I have also written to Boston, not
that I expect anything will be sent me, but that T may stand justified ;
for I have never yet been able to get much uf anything from thence. In
this situation I can only look up to your Excellency for relief."
FORT EDWARD II3
spoiled the standing crops, which lay within reach of the
enemy's foragers. Retaining in his lines barely enough
soldiers to serve as scouts and sentries, he converted the
rest, for the time being, into spade-labourers and wood-
men. He summoned to his aid the numerous colony
of excavators, and lumberers, and artisans who were
permanently engaged in developing, and keeping in
repair and order, his enormous property, which had
been regarded as the model estate of all colonial
America, and which was now the actual scene of
hostilities. With marvellous celerity, and almost irrep-
arable completeness of destruction, he broke up
the roads, and choked the water-ways, along which
Burgoyne's advance would necessarily be conducted.
And then, having given to his country everything else
which he possessed, he renounced, for her sake, his
cherished popularity, and exposed himself to the
triumphant and pitiless malice of his political adver-
saries. Convinced, as he was, that a premature battle
meant ruin to the American cause, he abandoned Fort
Edward, which was a fortress only in name, and with-
drew his army by gradual stages to a carefully selected
position at Stillwater, on the west bank of the Hudson
River, about ten miles to the southward of his own
ancestral country-seat at Saratoga.
The storm of obloquy and misrepresentation at once
commenced to rage with unbridled violence. John
Adams, as acute a man as ever set up for a military
critic without any aptitude for the trade, had already
pronounced, when he heard the bad news about
Ticonderoga, that his countrymen would never success-
fully defend a post until they had shot a general ; and,
so soon as Philadelphia learned that the Northern army
had relinquished Fort Edward to the invaders, and had
retreated to a point only ten leagues in front of Albany,
Schuyler's opponents, whether in or out of Congress,
felt assured that their chance had come for wrecking
his career, and covering his name with reproach and
dishonour. There was one man who took a calmer, a
VOL. IV. I
114 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
more favourable, and a wiser view of the strategy
which noisy and half-informed people declared to have
been inspired by pusillanimity, and even by treachery.
Washington was fully persuaded that the British, in
approaching Albany from the north, had undertaken
a task beyond their strength. After closely examining
the reasons given for each successive movement, he
accepted Schuyler's own account of the local cir-
cumstances which had governed the course of the
campaign ; he applauded, and even stimulated, that
general's distrust of fortified places which could be
turned or taken ; ^ and he quietly, but very plainly,
expressed it as his belief that, the deeper Burgoyne
penetrated into the interior of the States, the harder he
would find it to return. George Washington did not
fear committing himself beforehand to a definite view
of the military probabilities, if his forecast was of a
nature to put fresh heart into a sorely exercised col-
league. " Though our affairs," he wrote, '* for some
days past have worn a dark and gloomy aspect, I look
forward to a fortunate and happy change. I trust
General Burgoyne's army will meet sooner or later an
effectual check, and that the success he has had will
precipitate his ruin."
Washington took care to leave nothing undone which
might contribute to the fulfilment of his own hopeful
prognostications. He studied the list of Schuyler's
requirements with an attention which allowed no item
to escape his notice. Although he himself lived in
daily expectation of having Sir WiUiam Howe, with
1 Schuyler told Washington, on the 26th July, that the works at Fort
Edward were in ruins. " They are so utterly defenceless that I have
frequently galloped my horse in on one side, and out at the otlicr. But,
when it was in the best condition possible, with the best troops to
garrison it, and provided with every necessary, it would not have stood
two days' siege after proper batteries had been opened."
On the 22nd of that month Washington had written to Schuyler as
follows. " It will not be advisable to repose too much confidence in the
works you are about to erect. I begin to consider lines as a kind of
trap, and as not answering the valuable purposes expected from them,
unless they are in passes that cannot be avoided by the enemy."
FORT EDWARD II5
five-and-thirty regiments of Royal infantry, upon his
hands, he supplied those requirements out of his own
scanty means with a noble and well-judged disinterest-
edness ; and he provided first what was needed most.
On the very day that Schuyler's forlorn message
arrived at the headquarters of the Southern army, ten
field-guns, equipped and harnessed, were started on their
way towards Albany; together with all the musket-
cartridges that were in store at the arsenal, as well as
sixty barrels of powder, and a weight of lead to corre-
spond. Tents, indeed, could not be furnished, since
there were no tents in stock ; but Washington remem-
bered the camp kettles, and the shovels and pickaxes,
not one of which, without his express and peremptory
intervention, would ever have been issued from the
national magazines for use in the Northern army. He
detached from his own insufficient force two small
brigades of veterans ; noticeable among whom were
Colonel Glover's fishermen from Marblehead, and the
battalion which Rufus Putnam had trained into a corps
of rough, but very ready, pioneers and artificers.
Washington's early experiences of forest warfare had
lain along the Ohio, and not on the Hudson and the
Mohawk rivers ; but the primeval wilderness had the
same features everywhere ; and he knew the advantage
to a general, during a campaign in the backwoods, of
having people about him who could build bridges, and
fabricate breastworks, rapidly and out of rude materials.
And, while his other consignments were still upon the
road, he followed them up with the most portable and
valuable of all military reinforcements in the person of
an officer who would supplement Schuyler's deficiencies,
whether of bodily health or martial genius ; and who
could be trusted to live in reasonable harmony with the
chief under whom he served, if only that chief would
consent to allot him a great deal more than his fair
share of hard fighting.
Such an officer was now at Washington's disposal.
On the nineteenth February, 1777, Congress had ap-
1 2
Il6 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
pointed five additional Major Generals; and Benedict
Arnold's name was nowhere among the number. The
Brigadiers selected for promotion were all his juniors;
while he himself was left at the head of the list of
colonels, in the well-known, and rather undignified,
position of a veteran too respectable to be harshly re-
moved from the service, but notoriously unequal to the
emergencies of a command in the field. The blow
was cruel ; and it was felt by Washington not less keenly,
and resented more openly, than by Arnold himself.
The Commander-in-Chief let Congress know that, in his
opinion, they had put an inexplicable and unpardonable
slight upon an officer who was second to none in all the
qualities of a military leader;^ and in a succession of
letters, marked by intelligent sympathy and delicate
feeling, he counselled Arnold to refrain from taking
any hasty and irrevocable decision, and assured him
that no endeavour on his own part should be wanting to
correct an act of such flagrant injustice and signal
impoHcy. Arnold evinced his sense of Washington's
friendliness, in the manner most acceptable to his corre-
spondent, by maintaining an attitude of silence and self-
control. " Every personal injury," (he replied,) "' shall
be buried in my zeal for the safety and happiness of my
country, in whose cause I have repeatedly fought and
bled, and am ready at all times to risk my life."
These gallant words were soon brought to the proof.
Towards the end of April Governor Tryon sailed from
New York with a force of two thousand infantry. He
landed on the coast of Connecticut, between the two
model New England villages of Fairfield and Norwalk ;
both of which, under pressure of time, but not (as the
future was to show) from any want of inclination, he on
this occasion left unburned. Like a practical man, he
set business before pleasure. He marched straight up-
^ Washington to Richard Henry Lee, in Congress ; Morristown,
March 17, 1777. "I am anxious," (so Washington wrote,) "to know
whether General Arnold's non-promotion was owing to accident or
design ; and the cause of it. Surely a more active, a more spirited, and
sensible officer fills no department in our army."
FORT EDWARD i\y
country to Danbury, where he destroyed a large maga-
zine of provisions and ordnance stores belonging to the
Revolutionary government ; and it was only after he had
accomplished the public object of his mission that he
allowed himself the satisfaction of setting fire to every
private dwelling-house which had not a Tory owner.
The little town blazed all through the night, and would
have served as a beacon to alarm the neighbourhood if
the whole population of the Eastern townships had not
been awake already. Five or six hundred minute-men
were mustered under the orders of two militia generals ;
and Benedict Arnold, who happened to be at New Haven
on a visit to his sister, was with them in the character
of a volunteer. Connecticut lay outside the sphere of
his professional employment ; but, on an occasion like
the present, he had never been a stickler about the pre-
cise nature of his military authority, which always met
with sufficient recognition in those very perilous places
where he most cared to exercise it. When Tryon
started on his return march in the early morning his
rear-guard was furiously attacked by General David
Wooster, a citizen warrior near seventy years of age,
who had often helped King George the Second, and
King George the Third, to beat the French and Span-
iards on land and water. Wooster, with his spine
broken, was soon carried away to die ; ^ and his people
were a mere handful ; but they could not be shaken off
until Tryon's main column had been halted and de-
ployed, and his artillery brought into action. At a
defile two miles farther on the British found Arnold
planted across their path. His troops were not enough
to cover a front of half a furlong ; but he stood up to
his work as stiffly as if he had at his disposition a couple
of brigades. The Americans were at last out-flanked,
1 Congress voted a monument to General Wooster, which was not
erected until eighty years afterwards. His grave was then opened ; and
among the mouldering fragments of the old man's uniform, and the
homely badges of his rank, there was found the heavy regulation bullet
which had killed him.
1 1 8 THE AMERICAN RE VOL UTION
and driven from their position ; and Arnold, who was
always a laggard when it was a question of moving
towards the rear, had the exclusive benefit of a volley
from a whole platoon at the distance of thirty yards. His
horse fell, riddled with balls ; and he saved his own life,
not for the first time in the course of it, by his deadly
coolness with the pistol.
This desperate and unequal fighting had not been
wasted ; for the day was far spent, and Tryon had still
much ground to cover before he could reach his ships.
The British encamped during the night ; and, when they
resumed their march at dawn, all Connecticut was in
arms around them. Arnold's presence was visible and
dominant at every critical point along their line of re-
treat ; and, (no small matter to a commanding officer
with a crippled leg,) the horse which carried him on
that day was not shot until very near the end of the
battle. There were sharp encounters whenever the
Americans attempted to block the road ; but otherwise
the English general did not retaliate upon his pursuers.
His soldiers hurried along, galled by musketry, and (as
the afternoon proceeded) by cannon. They arrived at
the water's edge exhausted and disheartened, and so
incapable of any further exertion that they owed their
preservation from capture to the brilliant valour of the
Marines who had been ordered ashore from our frigates
to protect the re-embarkation. Tryon lost a tenth part
of his men ; but, on the other hand, he had deprived
the enemy of stores to the value of fifteen or sixteen
thousand pounds sterling, and had burned a score or
two of quiet families out of house and home. The affair
was a desultory and isolated raid, aiming at no solid
military advantage ; foredoomed to disaster ; and quite
exceptionally irritating to the population of the locality.
It was Lexington over again, in every particular, except
that at Lexington the Royal forces had been commanded
by a man of honour.^
1 Good English officers already discerned the futility and risk of such
operations as the expedition to Danbury. " We ought to avoid attacking
FORT EDWARD II9
When the story of Danbury was made public, Arnold
received the promotion which had so long been his due ;
and Congress presented him with a horse " properly
caparisoned, as a token of his gallant conduct." The
new Major General, however, declined to be pacified ;
and he was still bickering with the Board of War, and
the Committee of Accounts, when Washington, who
understood him better than he understood himself, con-
trived that he should be sent North to assist Schuyler in
making head against Burgoyne's army. Arnold at once
dropped his grievances, waived all his personal claims,
and expressed himself ready to take orders not only
from General Schuyler, but also from General St. Clair,
who was one of the five officers by whom he had re-
cently been superseded. He passed a night at Wash-
ington's headquarters, where the two generals talked
over the military prospect, shared a modest repast and
very narrow house-room, and even found time to put in
an appearance at a neighbouring Lodge in the peaceful
character of Brother Masons.^ Arnold then repaired
to his post without delay. Immediately on his arrival
he had an opportunity of doing the American cause as
important a service as any which he could have ren-
dered with his sword ; for he warmly supported Schuy-
ler's prudent and far-sighted proposal to retire from the
exposed position of Fort Edward, and take up his
ground thirty miles farther to the southward at Still-
any considerable body of them, — suppose two or three hundred, — unless
we can pursue our advantage, or at least take post ; for, though we may
carry our point, nevertheless, when we attempt to return to our Quarters,
we may be assured of their harassing us on our retreat." So Colonel
Harcourt wrote to his father more than a month before Tryon set out for
Connecticut.
1 Arnold was with Washington on the fifteenth July. On the twentieth
of that month there is the following entry in Colonel Pickering's journal.
" Headquarters at Galloway's ; an old log-house. The General lodged
on a bed, and his family on the floor about him. We had plenty of
sepawn and milk, and all were contented." Sepawn was porridge made
of Indian corn.
The two autographs were entered in the records of the Masonic Lodge.
Washington's signature may still be read ; but a thick black mark has
been drawn over the name of Arnold.
I20 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
water. The hero of Danbury and of Valcour Island
had no notion of concealing his opinion on a question
of practical strategy for fear of being taunted with want
of spirit by a parcel of civilians at Philadelphia.
The wisdom of Schuyler's policy in avoiding a battle
was by this time distressingly evident to yet another
general whose personal interest in the result of the
campaign was not inferior to Schuyler's own. The
most serious obstacles to the re-conquest of America, —
obstacles which the British people had hitherto very
dimly apprehended, and of which the British Ministry
never made any account at all, — consisted in the vast
distances, and still more in the natural difficulties, of
that country. A faithful and striking picture of these
difficulties ib to be found in an article contributed to
an English Magazine while the fate of Burgoyne's ex-
pedition was still in suspense. That article contained
information which, in the shape of a confidential
report from an officer of the Royal Engineers, ought
undoubtedly to have been submitted to the Cabinet
when they were asked to give their sanction to
the Northern expedition, or, (better yet,) before ever
they began the war.^ The forest highways, (so this
writer stated,) very seldom ran straight for many
yards together, but were continually on the turn
around innumerable fallen trees, which in time of
peace were never cleared away for want of hands to
remove them.^ In time of war, a single regiment of
American militiamen, — who manipulated their axes
not less effectively, and much more elegantly, than
their firelocks, — could within the twenty-four hours
1 This article, entitled Sojne of the circumstances which inevitably
retard the Progress of the Northern Army through the uninhabited
countries of America, may be read in The Gentleman's Magazine for
October 1777.
2 The rotting trunks, each of which occasioned a greater or shorter
diversion of the road, were *' as plenty as lamp-posts upon a highway
about London, and frequently as thick as the lamps upon Westminster
Bridge."
THE AMERICAN FOREST 121
render a long stretch of road impracticable even for
infantry. Every two or three miles there was a bridge
" twenty, thirty, or forty feet high, and twice or three
times as long, over a creek, or rather a great gutter
between two hills." For a retreating army it was an
easy matter to destroy those bridges ; but every one of
them would have to be re-built by the invaders at a
great cost of time and ingenuity. Frequent patches of
swamp, impassable otherwise for artillery, required to
be paved with small trees, cut into lengths of ten or
twelve feet, and laid side by side over a space of many
yards, or even some furlongs.^ An American campaign,
(the author remarked,) was well calculated to correct
the prophecies of chimney-corner strategists ; and an
officer, returning from such a service, would readily
admit that he brought back to Europe at least twice
the stock of patience which he had carried with him
on his outward voyage.
Much had been written in England, and with some
justice, about the expertness and the intrepidity of
Canadian boatmen. Great things, which were for the
most part impossibilities, had been expected from them
by Transport officers, and Commissariat officers, who
were new to America, and who had still to learn that
the Northern waters of that Continent did not lend
themselves readily to internal navigation. The larger
rivers, frozen late into April, and then swollen into
furious torrents by the melting snow, provided a very
swift, and most exciting, form of travel during the
month or six weeks which elapsed before the end of
May ; but after that date the droughts of summer soon
reduced the main current to a narrow and most un-
certain channel.^ The smaller streams were over-
^ Between the Oneida lake, and the Seneca River, there were upwards
of a hundred and thirty such causeways in the space of twelve miles.
2 During the hot weather, in the principal rivers, a strip of navigable
water wound through shallows so extensive and treacherous that a prac-
tised boatman was sometimes a quarter of an hour in wading from his
vessel to the shore.
122 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
arched with gigantic timber, which grew on their
banks more luxuriantly than in the drier soil of the
interior forest ; and those streams could be rendered
useless for military purposes by a comparatively small
expenditure of well-placed labour. The Marquis de
Montcalm, in the last French war, took such effective
measures for the obstruction of a certain water-way
that the surface was hidden by trunks and branches
for twenty-four computed miles ; and Lord Amherst's
pioneers spent many weeks in laboriously cutting,
through that tangled wreck of trees, a passage for his
fleet of boats.
Amherst had the rare good fortune to serve under
William Pitt, — a statesman who understood war, who
never pressed or flurried his generals, and who stinted
them in time as little as in the other hardly more
essential requisites for military success. Lord North's
Cabinet, however, unlike William Pitt's, would seem to
have derived their notion of the backwoods from maps
in which New York State, with its fifty thousand square
miles, showed of a size with Gloucestershire ; where the
Adirondacks, and the Green Mountains, stood as clear
from forest as the Malvern Hills; and where the
Kennebec and the Mohawk flowed, to all appearance,
through smooth lowlands like the valleys of the Severn
and the Thames. It was by the light of such maps
that Burgoyne had been accustomed to explain how he
would isolate the Kastern colonies from the rest of the
Confederacy by patrolling the chain of lakes and rivers
with his gun -boats, and scouring the roads with his
flying columns. But technical })hrases, which carried
cheerful conviction across a dinner-table in Mayfair,
did not sound as if they covered the whole of the
military situation when repeated in the heart of the
American jungle. By the time that Burgoyne's second
despatch came to be written he was forced to admit
that the toil of the march was great, though supported
by the troops with the utmost alacrity. They had, (he
said,) not only to cut away layers of large timber-trees,
THE AMERICAN FOREST 1 23
with the branches interlaced, which the enemy had
felled, "both lengthwise and across the road;" but
they likewise had above forty bridges to construct, and
others to repair, — one of which was of logs, over
a morass two miles in extent.^ The British reached
Skenesborough, at the head of Lake Champlain, on the
tenth of July ; and on the thirtieth they transferred
their camp to Fort Edward. Ably directed by theii*
military chiefs, and working like men the first edge of
whose strength and ardour was still unblunted, they
had advanced exactly twenty miles in the course of
twenty days.
At that rate of speed Burgoyne reached Fort
Edward, and found himself as far removed as ever
from his real object, which was the American army.
With sound judgment, — if judgment were of any avail
in that nightmare of a country, — he had estabhshed his
base of supply at the south end of Lake George, up to
which point the whole of his stores could be brought
by water. But Schuyler had sent a thousand men, axe
in hand, up each of the roads which led from Fort
George to Fort Edward ; and though General Philhps,
by supreme exertions, at length cleared a path for
wheeled vehicles, the means of transport were far
below the needs of the expedition. The most indis-
pensable requisite for any forward movement was the
construction of two soHd bridges over the two broad
and deep streams which flowed between the British
camp and the town of Albany ; and all the heavy
barges, which were to support the planking of those
bridges, had to be hauled overland every yard of the
way between Lake George and the bank of the Hudson
River. Of the horses which had been ordered by con-
tract in Canada, two out of every three never reached
the front ; and Burgoyne, employing the utmost
industry, had been able to collect only fifty teams of
^ Lieutenant General Burgoyne to Lord George Germaine ; Head-
quarters upon Hudson's River, near Fort Edward; July 30, 1777. This
letter was received at Whitehall on the twenty-fourth of September.
124 ^^^ AMERICAN REVOLUTION
oxen from the district in which he was now operating.
His military train, moreover, carried a great deal
besides the materials of his bridges ; for, as the army-
advanced, his commissariat supplies had all to be
carted from the rear. Schuyler had swept the country-
side so bare of food that the few Tory Loyalists, who
had not been frightened out of the neighbourhood by
Burgoyne's Indians, were only preserved from famine
by Burgoyne's charity.^
The Royal troops were reduced to subsist on pork and
beef which had been salted, and on flour which had been
ground, in England. Their ration was sometimes defi-
cient ; and the younger men husbanded it carelessly. A
private on the march was already laden with a blanket, a
badly hung knapsack, a canteen for water, a hatchet, his
share of the tent equipage and the cooking-vessels, his
side-arms, sixty cartridges containing bullets of a bore
large enough to break a horse's leg, and a musket twice
as heavy as the double-barrelled gun with which modern
country gentlemen go after partridges. And now, in
addition to this ponderous outfit, the British soldier was
directed to bring along with him his provisions for four
days ; which before the end of that period, in a hot July,
had usually become no very tempting burden. He
often emptied his haversack on to the roadside in the
hope of getting something fresher, and more to his
taste, when he reached the bivouac ; ^ and the dis-
appointment which there awaited him was sharpened
by a well-founded belief that the German auxiliaries
fared better than himself. Riedesel's Brunswickers
were more knowing purveyors than our own people,
and less unselfish comrades ; for their foraging parties
gleaned up many sheep and cattle, and then omitted to
^ " Among such as sued for protection are many families totally
destitute of corn ; and it is very embarrassing how to grant their request
upon this article without great inconvenience, or refuse it without equal
inhumanity." Burgoyne to Lord George Germaine ; Fort Edward, July
30, 1777. The letter was private.
2 The actual words, as frequently overheard on such occasions by
British officers, are reported in Lieutenant Anburey's 36th letter.
THE AMERICAN FOREST 12$
bring their prizes into the common stock. Burgoyne's
remonstrances were churlishly received, and stolidly
disregarded ; but he never appealed in vain to his own
countrymen on a point of military honour and patriotic
duty. He frankly took the English officers into his
confidence with respect to the difficulties of transport,
and reminded them that gentlemen, who served in
America during the last French war, had foregone their
claims to more roomy tents than those in use among
the rank and file, and had often confined their personal
baggage to one knapsack for a month together. That
courteous and friendly hint was taken in a kindred spirit.
Every British regiment sent the whole of its super-
fluities, and most of its comforts, back to Ticonderoga ;
but the Germans indignantly refused to separate them-
selves from their packages, which they fully intended,
when once they arrived among the rich towns and
villages to the Southward, should be largely increased
both in bulk and value. ^
Burgoyne had his troubles with the Brunswickers ;
but they were by no means the most unmanageable
people for whose conduct he was so unfortunate as to
be responsible. During the arduous pursuit of General
St. Clair, and the severe fighting at Hubbardtown, our
Indians had remained behind at Ticonderoga in order
to plunder the American cantonments ; and, now that
they had at last rejoined the army, their presence was
more a burden than a blessing. While everyone else
was on short commons, their gluttony could not be
satisfied with less than full rations ; and an Indian
ration was in itself a surfeit for any ordinary
European. Their peculiar habits were an offence to
all the senses of every decent civilised man. Officers,
who took part in Burgoyne's expedition, always
remembered with disgust the sight and smell of
a warrior seated in front of a stolen mirror for several
1 Some important extracts from Burgoyne's correspondence, bearing
on his relations with General Riedesel, are given in the sixth Chapter of
de Fonblanque's volume.
126 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
hours together, smearing himself with rancid bear's
grease, and layer after layer of glaring paints, in
preparation for a battle from which he was sure to
run away as soon as the first shot was fired. More
intolerable still were the hideous yells poured forth
by the gangs of braves on their return from a suc-
cessful foray, as they marched through the English
bivouacs bringing with them many scalps, and very
few living captives. It was quite useless for Burgoyne
to invoke the loyalty of the civil population so long as
all the approaches to his camp were beset by savages
who could not tell a Tory from a Whig, and who took
care never to inform themselves about the politics of
their victim while his hair still remained upon his head.
A deputation of Royalist partisans adventured them-
selves across the British lines for the purpose of
remonstrating with General Fraser on the subject of
these indiscriminate brutalities; but that officer told
them plainly that it was impossible to check such
irregularities in a conquered country. Fraser, indeed,
alone among his military colleagues, still set a high
value upon the co-operation of the Indians. When
he sent off to Canada, under a very feeble escort, a
numerous detachment of Americans who had been
taken in battle, he informed the prisoners that, if they
attempted to escape, the red men would be set upon
their trail, and they would all be scalped.
Before many days were over, even Fraser himself
had had more than enough of the Indians. There
resided in the vicinity of Fort Edward a certain Mrs.
Mac Neil, a staunch Tory who was a cousin of his own ;
and Scotch cousinships count for much. She had with
her a young friend, Jane Mac Crea, the daughter of a
clergyman of their own nation, who was a girl of graceful
form, and attractive by her intelUgent countenance and
her endearing disposition. Her lover was a fine, dash-
ing fellow who had brought a company of Loyalist
sharp-shooters to the assistance of Burgoyne. Early in
the morning of the twenty-seventh July some of our
THE AMERICAN FOREST 12/
Indian auxiliaries broke into Mrs. Mac Neil's house,
and dragged off the two ladies with circumstances of
barbarous violence. Meanwhile another party entered
the dwelling of a gentleman who, (whether that made
the case worse or better,) had always been strongly
opposed to the Revolution, and murdered him, his wife
and her sister, his three children, and all his negroes.
Later in the day Mrs. Mac Neil was led into the British
camp almost naked, in a pitiable condition of exhaus-
tion and distress, and terribly anxious about the fate
of her young companion. Her spirit had not been
broken ; and, when she was brought into the presence
of her kinsman, she let that eminent officer hear some
home truths. Not long afterwards the marauders arrived
with their spoils, which included a mass of glossy hair
a yard and a quarter long, which Mrs. Mac Neil recog-
nised as the hair of Jane Mac Crea. Burgoyne sum-
moned the Indians to a council, and demanded the
surrender of the poor girl's murderer, with every in-
tention of sending him immediately to the gallows.
But the guilty warrior was an important personage, —
a chief of gigantic stature, known as the Wyandot
Panther, who was greatly feared and admired by all
his tribesmen. It was represented to the British general
that, if his demand was pressed, the red men would go
off in a body, and return to their villages burning and
devastating the unprotected country on both sides of
the Canadian frontier ; and those who knew the Indians
best were very positive that, before they left the district,
they would avenge their friend by taking the lives of
English sentries. With this information before him,
Burgoyne allowed the delinquent to go unpunished.
The Wyandot Panther departed in peace, after he had
secured a purchaser for his trophy ; and the storm
which threatened to disturb the relations between King
George and his allies ended, for the present, in nothing
more serious than a passing cloud. ^
^ The fate of Jane Mac Crea soon took shape in a legend which has
long ere this been disproved and discredited. Her betrothed had not
128 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION'
Burgoyne was most uneasy. He found it a hard
matter to provide his troops with their daily bread ;
and he had as yet done little or nothing towards accumu-
lating a reserve of provisions which would enable him
to pursue an aggressive movement upon Stillwater and
Albany. He was in the humour for a rash, and even a
desperate, enterprise ; and the tempter was at hand.
The principal citizen in those parts, after whom Skenes-
borough was then called, was Philip Skene, an English
major on half -pay, who held under Royal Patent a large
tract of land to the South of Lake Champlain. He had
formerly been known as an officer of remarkable courage;
and he soon proved that he had lost none of it ; but he
was one of those fatal counsellors whose flattering tales,
in the earlier phases of the colonial controversy, had
enticed the British ministry, through folly and injustice,
into disgrace and irreparable disaster. Skene was of
small account in America ; but his silly letters carried
more weight in Downing Street than all the sober and
authoritative expostulations which emanated from such
genuine friends to England as Richard Penn and John
Dickinson.^ In the July and August of 1777 this gentle-
man was constantly at Burgoyne's elbow ; and he im-
parted to that very impressionable general his own ideas
about the strategy which suited the topography of the
commissioned a pair of Indians to escort her into the British camp for
her wedding. There occurred none of that stage business, borrowed from
the quarrel between the two villains in the " Babes in the W^ood," which
has found its way into many histories. Lieutenant Jones did not die
insane, nor did he get himself killed in battle. He bought the poor girl's
hair, and went away to Canada, where he lived into old age, melancholy
and taciturn ; though he was always ready to protest against the mass of
sentimental absurdity which had gathered itself round the dreadful truth.
He invariably spent the last week of July in solitude and seclusion.
1 " Colonel Skene, to whom I gave such exalted letters to you, is by
no Means the very great and consequential Man that he will endeavour
to make all believe." Letter from Henry Cruger in London to a relative
at New York ; May 3, 1775.
In the middle of July, 1777, Skene wrote to Lord Dartmouth very
positively about the hopeless condition of the rebels in Burgoyne's front.
He admitted, however, that it was not easy to execute concerted and
decisive military operations in that *' wooden country."
BENNINGTON 1 29
country, and his own illusions with reference to the
political sympathies of its inhabitants.
Thirty miles to the south east of Fort Edward, at
the foot of the Green Mountains, lay the village of
Bennington, where supplies had been collected from
the New England provinces for the use of Schuyler's
army. The place contained well-filled granaries, large
herds of cattle, and wheel-carriages and horses in con-
siderable number, although not so many as the English
believed. At that moment in the campaign the stores
of Bennington would have been a precious and a timely
prize ; but to send a very small body of troops on a
raiding expedition across the frontier of the Hampshire
Grants was like thrusting the bare hand into a bee-hive
in quest of honey. That, however, was the course
which Major Skene recommended, and which, after some
hesitation, Burgoyne adopted. Towards the middle of
August, 1777, he despatched Colonel Baum in the direc-
tion of Bennington with a mixed party of small and
heterogeneous detachments, numbering in all five or
six hundred men, of whom two thirds may have been
Germans.^ Burgoyne could spare very few soldiers ;
but he lavished upon the leader of the expedition, out
of his abundance, instructions of very liberal scope
embodied in exceedingly well-turned phrases. Colonel
Baum was directed " to try the affections of the country,
and disconcert the councils of the enemy ; " to arrest
all ofBcers, civil and military, who were acting under
the orders of Congress; to impose a subsidy on the
towns, and take hostages for the payment ; and to
bring back not fewer than one thousand three hundred
horses, *' tied in strings of ten each, in order that one
1 Mr. Fortescue, in his History of the British Army, states the com-
position of the force, as originally ordered by Burgoyne, to have been
" 150 Brunswick dismounted dragoons, 50 picked British marksmen,
150 Provincial soldiers, 56 Provincial and Canadian volunteers, and
80 Indians." Captain Max Von Eekling, in his Account of the German
Troops in the War of Independence, says that the proportion of Bruns-
wickers in Baum's column was largely increased before the expedition
started ; and that was certainly the case.
VOL. IV. K
130 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
man might lead ten horses." The merits of Burgoyne's
official diction were lost upon Colonel Baum, who did
not comprehend a word of English ; but Major Skene
was attached to his command, and served him as an
adviser and an interpreter. Skene solemnly assured
the German colonel that, in the districts which he was
preparing to invade, the friends of the British cause
were as five to one, and only awaited the appearance
of a British force in order to display their true colours.
The inhabitants of those districts had in their midst,
at that very moment, a trusted leader who was more
intimately informed about their political sentiments
than Major Skene, and who could make himself under-
stood by them a great deal better than Colonel Baum.
John Stark, — for he was now again a private citizen,
ungraced by any military title, — had acquired extra-
ordinary distinction in the most famous conflicts of
the Revolution. Congress, enamoured of mediocrities,
ignored his claims for promotion ; and Stark had resigned
his commission in the Continental army, and was now
living peacefully at his farm in New Hampshire. The
authorities of that State received an earnest request for
help from the Committee of Safety for the Hampshire
Grants ; and the members of the Provincial Assembly,
who had just concluded their Session, and departed for
their homes, were brought back to their duties by a
pressing summons. Their Speaker, John Langdon of
Portsmouth, addressed them in words which it is well
to quote in full as a specimen of the oratory employed,
during those sternly practical times, in the unsophis-
ticated regions situated to the North of the Merrimac
River. " I have," he said, " three thousand dollars in
hard money. I will pledge my plate for three thousand
more. I have seventy hogsheads of Tobago rum, which
shall be sold for the most it will bring. These are at
the service of the State. If we succeed in defending
our homes, I may be remunerated ; if we do not, the
property will be of no value to me. Our old friend
Stark, who so nobly sustained the honour of our State
BENNING TON 1 3 1
at Bunker's Hill, may be safely entrusted with the con-
duct of the enterprise, and we will check the progress
of Burgoyne."
And so the little community, instead of relying
on the charitable exertions of the central government,
proceeded to declare a sort of war within a war against
General Burgoyne and his army. Dependent for their
safety upon their own energy, and their own exiguous
resources, the people of New Hampshire were firmly
resolved to meet the peril under a chief of their own
choosing. A day of fasting and prayer was duly
proclaimed ; the local Tories were disarmed ; and Gen-
eral Stark, (for so his neighbours, during the next
fortnight, insisted on calling him,) was invested with the
supreme command. He resumed the old uniform
which he had laid aside, and bade farewell to his
charming wife, whom he was very soon to render
famous among women. The militiamen of the State
eagerly flocked to the banner of a warrior whose name
was a familiar word in all their households ; and there
were soon enough of them to form two respectable
brigades of infantry. Stark was ordered by General
Schuyler to join the camp at Stillwater, and bring all
his troops with him ; but he flatly refused to march.
His contumacious bearing aroused the indignation of
Congress ; and that body publicly characterised the
independent course taken by the Assembly of New
Hampshire as ''destructive of military subordination,
and highly prejudicial to the common cause." News
travelled slowly ; and, several days before the Resolu-
tion embodying that scathing rebuke was entered on
the Journals of the House, events had occurred which
made its authors, until their dying hour, sincerely wish
that they had left the matter alone.
Any mischief which might have resulted from the
ill-informed policy of the statesmen at Philadelphia
had been corrected by the good sense of their servant
on the spot. General Lincoln, who commanded for
Congress in the Hampshire Grants, while in his
K2
132 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
official capacity he condemned Stark's refractory con-
duct, had no intention of leaving him unsupported
whenever the decisive moment came. He quietly
placed at the disposal of the valiant malcontent all
that was left of Seth Warner's battalion of the Green
Mountain Boys, who in the recent action during the
retreat from Ticonderoga had behaved with intrepidity,
and suffered very heavily, for the common cause ; and
who were certain to acquit themselves not less manfully
in defence of their own firesides. In that regiment, as
even Major Skene would have admitted, the proportion
of enemies to American Independence must have been
considerably less than five to one. The men of the
Hampshire Grants were a rude and stubborn clan,
tenacious of their rights, and capable of making
themselves excessively disagreeable to anyone who
interfered with their liberty or their property. Twelve
years before this date they had expelled across the
border all those unlucky New York agriculturists to
whom the lands around Bennington had been granted
by Royal Patent; and they had still less inclination
to welcome Canadian savages, and German fusiliers,
as visitors in their townships and occupants of their
parlours. Towards the end of the Revolutionary war
a French nobleman in General Rochambeau's army,
amicably exchanging confidences with an officer in
one of our Highland regiments, confessed himself at
a loss to understand the motive which inspired the
Americans in battle. "I," he said, "fight for my
master. You for yours. Who is it that these people
are fighting for } " ^ The Green Mountain Boys, and
the New Hampshire minute-men, could doubtless have
given reasons for the political faith that was in them ;
but for the present they were satisfied with the know-
ledge that they were fighting to preserve their children
from the tomahawk, and their roof-trees from the torch.
Colonel Baum's perplexities began from the instant
1 This anecdote was told by Nicolas Chamfort, a brilliant Academician,
and a friend of Mirabeau.
BENNINGTON 1 33
when he crossed the frontier of the Hampshire Grants.
His main strength consisted in a regiment of Brunswick
Dragoons, — as workmanHke a cavalry as might be
found in Europe, but singularly unsuited for a forced
march on foot through a half-settled district in the
Northern provinces of America. *' They were equipped
with long, heavy riding boots, with big spurs, thick
leathern breeches, heavy gauntlets, a hat with a thick
feather ; at their side a strong sabretasch, and a short,
heavy carbine, while a big pig-tail was an important
part of this extraordinary costume."^ These unwieldy
troopers, according to the original scheme of the
expedition, were to be mounted on chargers captured
at Bennington, or picked up in the course of their
journey ; but, while Baum's dragoons were labouring
along bad roads in their absurd panoply, his Indian
allies, accoutred for secret and rapid movement,
ransacked the pastures far and wide, destroying the
horses, or driving them away to be sold at some future
time for their own profit. Baum complained bitterly
that the red men could not be controlled. They plun-
dered everything and everybody ; they slaughtered
wholesale the herds of fine cattle which grazed on the
lower slopes of the Green Mountains ; and they brought
nothing into camp except the cow-bells, of which, after
their fashion, they affected to be collectors. The com-
position of the invading force was gravely defective,
and its numbers entirely insufficient. A Tory guide,
who had been attached to the column, gave it as his
opinion, when he was out of Major Skene's hearing,
that the country could not be safely entered by fewer
than three thousand men. No Loyalist recruits
presented themselves for enrolment ; and it was
rumoured, and very soon was ascertained, that the
rebels were in great strength at Bennington. The
German advance came to a stand-still six or seven
miles to the north of that village. Baum planted
1 Chapter 7 of Captain Von Eekling's History.
134 ^^-^ AMERICAN REVOLUTION
himself on some very defensible ground, overlooking
a small river ; surrounded his encampment with well-
planned and substantial earthworks ; and sent back an
express to Fort Edward with an urgent petition for
assistance. Burgoyne despatched to the aid of the
threatened commander a force somewhat larger than
that which he had with him already. It was under the
orders of Lieutenant-Colonel Breymann, who passed,
with good reason, for the best among General Riedesel's
officers.
The American skirmishers had begun to make their
presence felt at Baum's outposts. Stark was in a hurry
to fight, whether with, or without, his own reserves ;
and he had still less intention of waiting for the appear-
ance of the enemy's reinforcements. He made an
appointment with Seth Warner's regiment, which was
cantoned in distant quarters, to meet him at the scene
of action ; and he moved forward with his New Hamp-
shiremen into the immediate vicinity of the German
intrenchments. During the night of the fifteenth
August, 1777, he was joined by a detachment of militia
from the Berkshire mountains of Massachusetts, in-
cluding the male parishioners of Pittsfield, with the
parson at their head. The reverend gentleman told
the American commander that his congregation had
often been summoned to war, and had invariably been
disappointed of a fight ; to which Stark rejoined that
he could not commence business in the dark, but that,
if the Lord allowed another day to break, they should
every one of them have as much fighting as their hearts
could desire.
The sun rose at his usual hour, and shone with the
extreme of glare and fervour; and, all the morning
through, small knots of farmers, — some in blue frocks,
and more of them in their shirt sleeves, — were quietly
stealing around towards the rear of the hostile position.
Two years before this date the German officers, when
they had their first sight of Washington's infantry, pro-
nounced that the rebels looked like a mob which had
BENNINGTON 1 35
been hastily gathered together ; ^ but these groups of
half-dressed rustics did not appear to possess even the
cohesion of a mob. Major Skene conjectured that they
were local Tories, watching an opportunity to enter the
Royal lines for the purpose of taking the Oath of
Allegiance ; and Colonel Baum, in any case, attached
very little importance to their proceedings.^ By three
in the afternoon the Brunswicker was completely sur-
rounded. The Americans advanced upon his pickets,
drove them into the redoubt, and ensconced themselves
behind such cover as they could procure within shooting
distance of the garrison. The Indians made their exit
at once, and rushed off in a body, howling and jingling
their cow-bells ; but otherwise the whole of both the
little armJes became immediately engaged in a fierce
and incessant battle. " It lasted," said Stark, " two
hours, and was the hottest I ever saw. It was like one
continued clap of thunder." And yet Stark had heard
the sustained fusillade at Bunker's Hill, and the fiendish
din in the streets at Trenton.
Both parties raised a tremendous noise ; but the
execution actually done, on the one side and on the other,
was very unequal. Two out of every five Brunswickers
were hit by American bullets ; and some of the New
Hampshire militia crept within ten or twelve yards of
the battery, and shot down the Hanau artillerymen
at their guns. The dragoons, as far as courage and
devotion would serve, maintained the high reputation
of their corps ; but they showed no great skill with
their rather indifferent fire-arms. Victory for the
assailants was only a question of hours. Colonel Brey-
mann, however, was near at hand ; and Stark had no
time to spare. He seized the moment with a practised
glance, and led forward his soldiers, of whom not a
few were his fellow-townsmen and his family friends,
after making a very brief and stirring appeal to their
^ Chapter i of Captain Von Eekling's History*
2 Von Eekling ; Chapter 7.
T 36 THE AMERICAN RE VOL UTION
neighbourly sympathies. ** Come on, my lads ! " he
cried. "We must get them beaten; or Molly Stark
will be a widow to-night." Sword in hand, and on
foot, (for his horse had been killed,) and begrimed by
the powder-smoke almost beyond recognition, he looked
anything rather than a lady's man. It was not a bayonet
charge, for his people had no bayonets ; but they came
on behind him with their fowling-pieces clubbed, striking
downwards like the Swiss halberdiers in their battles
with Charles the Bold of Burgundy. Lord Sandwich
might have altered the tone of his speaking in the
House of Peers if he could have seen that flood of
Yankee cowards streaming across the breastworks.
Colonel Baum fell mortally wounded ; and, according
to the most authentic German testimony, only thirty
dragoons, out of nearly four hundred, ever made their
way back to Burgoyne's camp.^ Major Skene, doing
something to redeem his ignorance and folly by con-
spicuous activity in combat, had already lost four
horses ; and he now got safe away from a swarm of
marksmen, who were bent on taking him alive, on a
fifth steed which died beneath him as soon as he was
outside the range of fire.
A relieving force was within sound of the cannon,
and even of the musketry, for some while before the
redoubt was stormed. " That misfortune," (wrote Bur-
goyne,) "would certainly have been avoided if Mr.
Breymann could have marched at the rate of two miles
an hour, any given twelve hours out of the two-and-
thirty." It must, however, be borne in mind that the
officer, whose conduct was thus impugned, never
showed himself backward in battle. He did not live
to return to Europe, and tell his own tale ; his progress
across country on this occasion was far from abnormally
slow according to the standard observed by the British
army during the Saratoga campaign ; and, (for that was
^ A letter from Canada, quoted in a London newspaper of November
1777, says that the Germans "stood like a stone wall until they were cut
to pieces."
BENNINGTON 1 37
the real point in question,) Burgoyne should have sent
Colonel Breymann and his troops with Colonel Baum,
and not after him. Whether or not Breymann had
idled on the way, he undoubtedly exhibited no slackness
in presence of the enemy. He gave the American com-
mander no time to re-assemble those civilian soldiers
who had dispersed to revel in the joy and excitement
of their victory. Six hundred light infantry and grena-
diers, the choicest of Riedesel's Brunswickers, swept
forward in order of battle, driving before them the
groups of militiamen whom Stark and his aides-de-
camp had with difficulty recalled from plundering the
German baggage-carts, and picking up brass-plated
sword-belts as heirlooms for their families. The final
event of the day was still in suspense, and the balance
had begun to incline against the Americans, when the
long-expected battalion of Green Mountain Boys came
marching to the rescue. Their ranks had been cruelly
thinned at Hubbardtown ; but the survivors were ready
for another encounter on such conditions as satisfied
their exaggerated self-respect, and their quaint pro-
vincialism. Seth Warner, — who, like most good
American officers, was too much inclined to seek a
fight for its own sake, when his strict duty should have
kept him out of it, — had taken part in the assault on
the intrenchment, and was missing for some time after
the melee ceased. His soldiers obstinately refused to
charge until they received the word of command from
their own colonel ; but Warner at length was found, and
then he and his people went into the battle together.^
1 It was long before the men of the Hampshire Grants lost their
character for indomitable, and rather troublesome, independence. In the
summer of 1781 Washington requested their old general to call them into
the field in order to meet a temporary emergency. " Your power," (the
Commander-in-Chief wrote,) " must be unlimited amongst those people
at whose head you have formerly fought and conquered with so much
reputation and glory." " I shall," replied Stark, "hold a treaty with the
Green Mountain Boys ; but, not having seen those turbulent sons of
freedom for several years, I am at a loss to determine my reception."
They gave him, however, a most cordial greeting, and turned out on
horseback five hundred strong.
138 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
The New Hampshire miUtia only wanted a lead. They
crowded up to the right and left of Warner's regiment ;
a crashing fire broke out along both the opposing
fronts ; and Stark once again was in his element. The
German advance was checked. Before many minutes
had elapsed it became converted into a retrograde move-
ment ; and there were no troops in the world who could
retreat with impunity in face of American sharp-shoot-
ers. That busy and audacious individuality, which was
the strength and the weakness of the Revolutionary
soldier, was never so formidable as when he was in
pursuit of a partly-beaten adversary. The New Eng-
landers plied their legs briskly, and aimed with the
deliberation of men who knew the cost in cents of every
round that they fired. When the darkness settled down,
they discharged their pieces at pistol-distance from the
bushes on either side of the road, with some danger to
each other, but with little or no reply from the enemy ;
for the retiring column had filled up with wounded, and
the cooler and best disciplined ])rivates were told off to
help along their disabled comrades. Colonel Ikeymann
hardly got away by favour of the night, after losing
both his guns, and a full third of his rank and file.
" Another hour of daylight," said Stark, " and I should
have captured the whole body." Under those circum-
stances Colonel Ethan Allen would have been seriously
displeased with Providence because the sun had not
stood still for him, as for Joshua ; but Stark was far
from ill-satisfied with a success so perfectly timed
to advance the welfare of his cause, and so cheaply
purchased. The Americans acknowledged a hundred
casualties as the price of their double triumph. They
claimed, probably with truth, seven hundred prisoners,
including the injured men who remained in their hands;
and they certainly had taken the whole artillery which
the Germans brought into the field, together with a
thousand stand of arms, and swords more than enough
to equip all the cavalry that could be raised within the
boundaries of New Hampshire, and of Massachusetts
FORT ST AN W IX 1 39
as well. There were dry eyes, and not a little secret or
open pride and elation, wherever the story of the affair
was read in English ; for it was an Englishman's victory.
A force of drilled and pipe-clayed foreigners, intruding
where they were not wanted, had been put to the rout
by English farmers, lighting in civilian costume, and
with native courage, to defend the inviolability of their
English homes. ^
Meanwhile a series of moves, with an important bear-
ing on the fate of the game, was being played in the
opposite corner of the strategic chess-board. Far to
the westward, on the spot where the town of Rome now
stands, and at a point where the old military route from
Montreal and Oswego entered the upper portion of the
Mohawk Valley, Fort Stanwix was held for the Revo-
lution by a strong garrison, under the command of an
excellent officer. During the month of July, 1777, the
environs of the place had been infested by those Indian
warriors who formed the advance guard of Colonel St.
Leger's army. The red men prowled through the
thickets, killing and scalping, in the interest of the
counter-revolution, soldiers who had wandered beyond
the fortifications to shoot wood-pigeons, and little girls
from the neighbouring farmhouses who were out of
doors in search of blackberries. At the beginning of
August, Colonel St. Leger himself arrived before the
walls with a few companies of British Regulars, some
Hessians and Canadians, and two battalions of infantry
bearing the title of the Royal Greens. They had been
raised in the Northern townships of New York State by
Sir John Johnson, a Tory baronet ; whose father. Sir
William, had competed on equal terms with no less
1 Lossing gives a full account of Bennington ; illustrated, as always,
by intelligent study of the locality, by authentic oral traditions, and by
interviews with old people who remembered the war.
Stark was nearly fifty in 1777. He died at the age of ninety-twO;
and, during the last years of his life, he enjoyed a pension from Congress
of sixty dollars a month. The real heroes of the Revolution were not
burdensome to their country.
140 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
• powerful a territorial magnate than Philip Schuyler for
social and political leadership among the white popula-
tion of that feudal region. Sir William had no rival in
his influence over the Indian tribes ; and his knowledge
of the Indian character was enlarged, and kept up to
date, by a course of life which created less scandal in
his day than in ours. His mansion, — fortified, and
crowded with guests and inmates, like a mediaeval castle,
— always contained some handsome squaws ; and he
had children in incredible number, and of various shades
of colour. He only just lived into, and perhaps died
of, the Revolution. With many faults, he was a much
finer fellow than his son and successor ; and his last
days were saddened and distracted by a mental conflict
between sincere attachment to the liberties of his Colony,
and gratitude towards a Sovereign who had rewarded
his frequent and valuable services with princely muniti-
cence. Sir John Johnson, unlike his father, was not a
patriot, but a partisan of a singularly noxious type. He
stands condemned by all honest Americans, Tories and
Whigs alike, as an instigator and accomplice in the
Wyoming foray, —;- the most horrible outrage on the
helpless and the innocent which, in the long history of
our race, was ever perpetrated in the name of i.oyalty.
The troops inside Fort Stanwix were enough to man
the works ; and their spirit was high, and their temper
hopeful. Some of their officers had procured a sketch
of the national flag recently adopted by the Continental
Congress, and had manufactured a banner, resplendent
with stars and stripes, out of their best coloured cloaks
and their finest linen. ^ They had powder and lead in
plenty ; but their stock of provisions was far from
inexhaustible, and their only communication with the
outer world lay along a hundred miles of forest-track,
^ A Committee was appointed by Congress " to design a suitable flag
for the nation." It consisted apparently of Robert Morris and George
Washington. They took into their counsels, with the best results, Mrs.
Betty Ross, a leading milliner of Philadelphia, reputed to be "the finest
needle-worker in America." Their design was adopted by an Act of Con-
gress of June 14, 1777.
FORT ST AN W IX I4I
intersected by narrow defiles, and deep and obscure
ravines. A first attempt to relieve the garrison was
made by local effort. The militia of Tryon County
mustered at the instance of General Herkimer, one of
those tough and stout-hearted patriarchs who were so
much to the front during the earlier struggles of the
Revolution. Herkimer penetrated, without opposition,
as far as Oriskany, a distance of only six miles from
Fort Stanwix ; but there he fell into an ambuscade
planned and planted with consummate art by the famous
Indian chief who is known to history under his English
appellation of Joseph Brant. The Americans were shot
down by scores. Many of them fled, and were slain as
they ran. But the braver men stood their ground ; the
Seneca warriors, on their part, were no skulkers ; and
the contest was prolonged, knife to knife and muzzle to
muzzle, with deadly fury and pertinacity. Oriskany, for
the strength of the forces engaged, proved to be the
bloodiest conflict of the entire war. Herkimer's leg had
been shattered, and his horse killed ; but the old man
bade them place his saddle against the trunk of a
spreading beech, and there he sate, erect in the middle
of the tumult, — with death upon him, though perhaps
he did not know it, — as cool and observant as if he
were superintending the operations of a deer-hunt. He
noticed that, whenever a militia-man discharged his piece,
an Indian would rush in with his hatchet before there
was time to reload. Herkimer accordingly stationed
his soldiers behind their trees in pairs, so that, when one
had fired, the other had a bullet ready for an assailant ;
and the great number of savages killed and wounded, as
a consequence of this simple device, eventually con-
tributed more than any other single cause to decide the
campaign on the Mohawk River. While the contest in
the ravine was still raging, the garrison of Fort Stanwix
made a vigorous sally, beat up Sir John Johnson's
quarters, secured twenty waggon-loads of spoil, sent
the Royal Greens decamping in confusion, and captured
five of the flags with which that corps of sinister and
142 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
inglorious memory was superabundantly provided. If
those standards had remained eleven more months in
the custody of the regiment, they would have been
inscribed with the immortal name of Wyoming Valley.
Both sides claimed to have been victors in this confused
and dubious fighting ; but the true character of a battle
is determined by the practical and visible result; and
Herkimer's militia had been so frightfully mauled that
they did not think it safe to remain within many miles
of St. Leger's army.^
Unless more effectual help came from some other
quarter, Fort Stanwix was doomed to fall ; and Philip
Schuyler had not blinded himself to the inevitable con-
sequences of that catastrophe. The terms of capitu-
lation which Colonel St. Leger, in all good faith, was
prepared to grant, might be generous and humane, and
embodied in articles drawn up with minute precision ;
but the surrender of the place would, none the less, most
probably be followed by a wholesale massacre of the
garrison. The ghastly tragedy of Fort William Henry,
in the last French war, — that indelible stain on the
Marquis de Montcalm's fine reputation, — showed that
there were certain contingencies in which the best-
intentioned European commander might be powerless to
save the lives of adversaries who had committed them-
selves to his honour ; and a still more recent deed of
treachery had only too clearly indicated that the most
vindictive and ungovernable of all Indians belonged to
that very tribe which now was beleaguering Fort Stan-
wix.^ When the American stronghold had succumbed,
1 The Public Papers of George Clinton contain a report of the battle
at Oriskany written from the Mohawk Valley. " All accounts," (so the
letter runs,) " agree that a great Number of the enemy is killed. The
Flower of our Militia are either killed or wounded, except 150, who stood
the Field, and forced the enemy to retreat. The wounded are brought
off by these brave men. The dead they left on the Field for want of
a proper support. We will not take upon us to tell of the behaviour of
the rear. So far as we know they took to flight, the first firing."
2 Only fifteen months back, these same Seneca Indians had toma-
hawked and scalped a number of wounded American prisoners in violation
of a compact of surrender.
FORT STANWIX I43
and its defenders had been exterminated, the intoxication
of success, and the hope of booty, would draw forth
fresh hordes of marauders from all the villages of the
Six Nations ; and the mass of exulting savages would
pour down the Mohawk Valley, leaving desolation in
their rear, and carrying fire and death into the fertile
and thickly peopled home-district which surrounded
the town of Albany. Schuyler assembled a council of
war, and advocated immediate and efficacious action
for the relief of the imperilled fortress. But the
officers whom he addressed were politicians before they
were patriots or miUtary men ; and his proposal was
scouted and out-voted, not so much from disapproval
of the scheme as from dislike of its author. Stung by
an unfair and ill-natured remark, which was meant to be
overheard, Schuyler crushed the stem of his clay pipe
into fragments between his teeth ; ceased his gloomy,
pre-occupied walk up and down the chamber ; and faced
the group of disloyal subordinates with resentful dig-
nity. " Gentlemen," he said, *' I shall take the respon-
sibility upon myself. Fort Stanwix and the Mohawk
Valley shall be saved. Where is the Brigadier who
will command the rehef?" That appeal was directed
to others rather than to Benedict Arnold, for he was
a Major General, and not a Brigadier ; but, when work
required to be done, he never stood upon his rank.
He had been sent north, (he quietly said,) in order
to make himself useful ; and he offered Schuyler his
services, which were gratefully accepted. Next morn-
ing the drums beat through the camp for volunteers ;
and, by noon, eight hundred men had agreed to follow
wherever Arnold chose to lead them. A week's march
brought him to a point less than thirty miles from
Fort Stanwix. The militia of the valley, — keen for
another chance at the invader, and confident that no
Tory partisan, whether red or white, could lay an
ambuscade which would catch General Arnold, — had
rallied round him in great force ; and Colonel Ganse-
voort, who had conducted the defence of the fort with
144 ^-^"^ AMERICAN REVOLUTION
vigilance and resolution, was gratified by receiving ai\
assurance that the siege would be raised long before
he had served out his last biscuit.^
Although Arnold might be a fire-eater when no
alternative diet could be had, he was far too good a
soldier to entertain any prejudice against a bloodless
victory. A Tory spy, who had been detected and
arrested within the American Unes, consented to save
his neck by undertaking a mission which was only less
dangerous than being hanged outright. The man's
brother was detained as a hostage ; while he himself,
carefully primed and tutored, and with several bullet-
holes shot through his coat, ran into the Indian camp
outside Fort Stanwix with a story that General Arnold
was close at his heels. When asked whether the enemy
were few or many, he pointed to the forest-leaves over-
head with an eloquent gesture. The Seneca warriors
listened to his tale with ready belief, and profound
emotion. They had marched out from their lodges in
quest of plunder, and not of glory ; the slaughter of
their foremost tribesmen at Oriskany had depressed
and disenchanted them; and they now were impatient
to be gone. They would not so much as stay to
make themselves drunk, in spite of Colonel St. Leger's
pressing invitation. They rushed away in their usual
clamorous disorder ; and the panic spread to the Royal
Greens, who were very poor hands at fighting with
grown men, and not in the least inclined for an armed
collision with Benedict Arnold. The two battalions
broke their ranks and made off into the woods, shedding
their knapsacks, and flinging down their muskets,
— an act of improvidence which they soon found cruel
reason to repent. The rest of the besiegers had no
choice except to follow ; and St. Leger started for
Oswego without a moment's delay, leaving behind his
stores, his tents, and the whole of his artillery. The
humihations and distresses of that retreat are a stand-
ing lesson on the real value of barbarian auxiliaries.
^ Arnold to Gansevoort ; August 22, 1777.
FORT STANWIX I45
The red men lost all deference for their European
employers; and, as savages will, they passed from
familiarity to mischief and impertinence, and thence,
by quick stages, to insolence, violence, and outrage.
Whenever the Royal Greens threw themselves down to
repose, they were hunted out of their bivouacs by an
irruption of whooping Indians, and compelled to re-
sume their exhausting journey. At length the fugi-
tives reached the shores of Lake Ontario ; but they
were not permitted to embark in peace. Their boats
were seized and towed away, with the reserve pro-
visions on board ; and the fiercer warriors made a
deliberate onslaught upon the unarmed and defenceless
Loyalists. Many were murdered and scalped ; and
even those whose lives were spared were in some cases
stripped of all their clothing. Colonel St. Leger de-
clared, in an official despatch, that, after fortune began
to turn against him, his Indian allies were more for-
midable than his American enemy.^ The remnant of
the expedition straggled back to Canada in piteous
case ; and before the end of August it became evident
that one, at least, of Lord George Germaine's three
enveloping columns would never appear at the trysting-
place in front of Albany.
1 St. Leger to Burgoyne \ August 27, 1777.
VOL. IV.
CHAPTER XXXII
STILLWATER. BEMIS'S HEIGHTS. SARATOGA. THE
VIOLATED CONVENTION
The left and right wings of the Canadian Army had
now been successively defeated, and completely swept
off the board ; and the fate of the invasion, from this
time forward, depended exclusively upon the central
column which Burgoyne led in person. He and Schuy-
ler still faced each other in the same quarters, with the
same interval of space between them ; but the three
weeks which had elapsed since the British reached Fort
Edward had wrought a marvellous change in the rela-
tive strength, numerical and moral, of the opposing
forces. Philip Schuyler played an honourable part in
the vigorous policy which contributed to the ameliora-
tion of the American chances ; but the principal credit
was due to George Washington, who had taken the
strategy of the campaign firmly and promptly in hand.
He condemned the proposal " to unite all the militia,
and Continental troops, in one body, and make an op-
position wholly in front ; " and he explained with force
and lucidity the importance of acting on the flank and
rear of an enemy who had thrust himself into such an
adventurous and isolated position as General Burgoyne
at present occupied.^ Putting his theoretical advice into
immediate practice, he sent General Lincoln to the
Hampshire Grants with directions to fall upon the in-
vaders from the Eastern quarter ; to attack their con-
voys ; and, (if practicable,) altogether to intercept their
communications with Canada.
It was not Washington's habit to promulgate orders
without supplying the means to carry those orders into
^ Washington to Governor Clinton ; i6 August, 1 777.
146
STILLWATER 1 47
execution. He himself had work before him demand-
ing at least half again as large an army as Congress
had placed at his disposal ; and he was not justified in
sending more than a few of his own regiments to the
assistance of General Schuyler. Those, however, which
he had given were of his very best; and he supple-
mented that sacrifice by a liberal exertion of the influ-
ence which he possessed over the affection and obedience
of his compatriots. He foresaw that the contest to the
north of Albany must be short and sharp, and that
every right arm, which could be spared from the scythe
and the sickle during the height of harvest, would be
needed for the defence of the Republic. In a docu-
ment, the issue of which marks a turning point in the
Revolutionary War, George Washington informed New
England that he relied upon her citizen-soldiers for sup-
port in that time of trial. *' General Arnold, who is so
well known to you all," (those were the concluding words
of a concise and impressive exhortation,) ** goes up at
my request to take the command of the miUtia in par-
ticular, and I have no doubt but you will, under his
conduct and direction, repel an enemy from your bor-
ders, who, not content with hiring mercenaries to lay
waste your country, have now brought savages, with the
avowed and expressed intention of adding murder to
desolation."
Although this celebrated epistle was ostensibly ad-
dressed only to Brigadiers of Militia in the Western
parts of Massachusetts and Connecticut, it was read
with enthusiastic approval by the whole population
of those two States. General Heath, from his head-
quarters at Boston, had already taken steps for sending
back to their regiments in irons the recreant soldiers
who had deserted Schuyler ; ^ but, after the publica-
tion of Washington's letter, there was no longer any
call for compulsory measures. The people of Massa-
chusetts had been flattered by the appointment to high
command of General Lincoln, who was universally
1 William Heath to George Washington; Boston, July 16, 1777.
L2
148 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
popular in his native province ; and they were fully
determined that the story of Jane MacCrea should not
be repeated in their own villages. They arrived at the
very sound conclusion that, in order to protect their
families from the Wyandot Panther and his brother
warriors, the shooting must be done, not from the
windows of farmhouses in the interior townships of
their State, but in line of battle outside the borders of
New England. Before the middle of August a sixth
part of the militia of several counties marched off to
reinforce the Northern army.^ The pewter of the
Massachusetts side-boards, — whether dishes, plates, or
spoons, — was melted down into ball, and packed off for
the use of the troops on the Hudson River; and the
officials of Pittsfield, most of whose able-bodied fellow-
townsmen had already started for the front in company
with their bellicose parson, despatched to camp their
last hundred-weight of gunpowder, and did not leave
themselves enough ** to fire an alarm " in case their
neighbourhood was threatened by a hostile incursion.^
When such was the temper of Massachusetts, —
which hitherto had been backward, and which lay
outside the direct line of Burgoyne's projected advance,
— it may well be believed that apathy did not prevail
in the province where the war was raging. The
Council of Safety for New York State placed their sons
and their treasure unreservedly in the hands of the
stout soldier whom they had recently elected as their
Governor. General George Clinton had already taken
their consent for granted. Fifteen hundred militiamen
from the nearest counties were on their road to Albany.
A requisition had been made for a force of five hundred
infantry to protect Schuyler's rear; and eight hundred
were at once levied and despatched. Clinton told his
Brigadiers of militia that every man who could bear
1 William Heath to John Nixon ; Headquarters, Boston, Aug. 16,
1777.
^Colonel William Williams to Ezekiel Cheever ; Pittsfield, Aug. 17,
1777.
STILLWATER 1 49
arms must on this occasion be brought into the field,
and no person exempted whose services were wanted.
"For which," he wrote, "you are not to wait for any
further and more particular order." ^
Very generous help came from a more distant region,
where patriotic ardour and wrath had for some months
past been at fever-heat. The fiery cross had been sent
far and wide through Connecticut ; but it was not
kindled by American hands. That conflagration of
private dwellings which took place in the town of
Danbury excited, and may almost be said to have mad-
dened, the whole population of the province.
" We thought to fire but farm-steads. We have lit
A flame less transient in the hearts of men.""
So the agents who carried out Governor Tryon's vin-
dictive behests might with good reason have boasted ;
for they proved themselves the most effective recruiting-
officers in the service of Congress. Three thousand
citizens of the outraged State had already marched to
swell the Army of Reserve which was stationed under
General Putnam at Peekskill in the central Highlands ;
and a battalion of infantry was told off to reinforce the
garrison of Providence, in order that the enlightened
and prosperous little capital of Rhode Island might be
safe from the destruction which overtook so many
other sea-side towns and villages. Considerable num-
bers of the Connecticut militia had repaired to the aid
of Colonel Stark at Bennington ; and some among them
arrived in time for the battle. ^ And yet, after listening
favourably to requests for support from so many quar-
ters, Jonathan Trumbull was not deaf to the cry of
distress which reached him from beyond the Hudson
River. The old Puritan gentleman assured General
Schuyler that he should not be forsaken in his day of
1 George Clinton to General Schuyler, and to Brigadier General Ten
Broeck; both of August 2nd, 1777.
2 Jonathan Trumbull to Horatio Gates ; Hartford, 2 1st of August,
1777.
1 5 O THE AMERICAN RE VOL UTION
peril ; and he carried with him the public opinion of the
province which he administered. The Committeemen
of the County of Albany had put forth an importunate,
but not undignified, invocation to the sympathies of
Connecticut. They recalled the circumstance that,
when New England was in danger, the State of New
York had come forward spontaneously to the rescue.
** Our country," they wrote, " is now invaded ; but where
are our Eastern friends ? What have we done to forfeit
their esteem } " When that letter was received at
Litchfield, — the nearest large town in Connecticut to
the seat of war, — the local Committee was called
together, and an answer transmitted by return of post.
There was no time to correct the spelling, and possibly
no sense of any need that such correction was required ;
but the rarest Uterary skill could not have added force
or clearness to the unhesitating and unconditional
pledge, which the reply contained, that, come what
might, the States of New York and Connecticut should
stand or fall together.^ Those were not empty words.
General Schuyler had asked Governor Trumbull for a
thousand troops. The response came in the shape of
two hundred cavalry, and two strong, well-officered
regiments of musketeers ; and, before many weeks were
out, the Connecticut militia had done their duty bravely
in that furious and equal battle of the nineteenth of
September which tested the relative fighting quality of
Englishmen and Americans as it never had been tested
before, and as, by the mercy of God, it will never in
the future be tested again.
1 The answer of Litchfield to the circular from Albany was signed at
six P.M. on the 4th August, 1777. "Yours of the First Instant," (so
it commenced,) " respecting the alarming Situation of our northern
affairs never reached us before this moment. Surely, Gentlemen, we
shall never be backward in affording every Possible aid in our power for
the Relief of the County of Albany. We are not so narrow and Contracted
as not to extend every assistance as well to the Inhabatents of a sister
state as to those of our own ; nor do we imagine that we our selfs can
long be safe whilst Desolation and Conquest over spread your State. In
short our Feelings are such that we would run every Hazzard, and risque
every danger, for you that we should for ourselves."
STILLWATER 151
The importance which Washington attached to the
campaign against Burgoyne may be estimated by the
fact that he deprived himself, for General Schuyler's
benefit, of a small body of troops who, since fire-arms
were invented, never perhaps had their equals, man for
man, unless it were the Ninety Fifth Regiment of Lord
Wellington's Peninsular army. The American Com-
mander-in-Chief informed the Governor of New York
State that he was forwarding, as fast as possible.
Colonel Morgan's corps of five hundred riflemen. " I
expect," (he said,) ** the most eminent services from
them ; and I shall be mistaken if their presence does
not go far towards producing a general desertion among
the savages. I should think it well, even before their
arrival, to begin to circulate these ideas, with proper
embellishments, throughout the country and in the
army, and to take pains to communicate them to the
enemy ; " and Washington, — a great master of artifice,
in its proper place, — added that it would not be amiss
to magnify their numbers.^ Their value in war it was
impossible to exaggerate. History knows them as
Morgan's Virginians ; but fully two-thirds of them were
from the Western frontier of Pennsylvania, and two-
thirds of those were Scotch-Irish, who traced back
their descent to Ulster. The rest were German settlers
of the hardier sort, grateful to the democratic govern-
ment which had afforded them an asylum from religious
persecution, and from the liability to be sold as military
slaves for the personal profit of an impecunious Prince
Bishop or Grand Elector.^ At a period when the
European private was hampered for travel and conflict
by a burden of complicated accoutrements which to
modern notions is hardly credible, and altogether
f^
^ General Washington to Governor Clinton ; i6th August, 1777.
2 Mr. Kephart relates that when Morgan was asked which race, of
those composing the American army, were the best soldiers, he replied :
" As for the fighting part of the matter, they are pretty much alike. They
fight as much as they find necessary, and no more. But, Sir, for the
grand essential give me the Dutchman. He starves well."
152 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
ridiculous, the American rifleman went about his
business unencumbered, and in rational attire. Every
article, (we are told,) in his scanty outfit was cut down
to the last practicable ounce, save only the long barrel
of his rifle.^ He wore the hunting-shirt and, in winter,
embroidered buckskin leggings in a single piece ; but
during the heats of summer the men for the most part
adopted the Indian breech-clout, the most elementary
garment consistent with the demands of propriety that
has been in use since the Fall of Man.^ In the warfare
of the forest these backwoodsmen moved among the
litter of dry leaves, and brittle twigs, shod with the
silent moccasin ; and on the march they picked their
way securely over slippery logs, and along dizzy
mountain-tracks, in that most supple and durable of
foot-gear. Their commissariat was limited to a wallet-
ful of jerked venison and powdered Indian corn ; and
their commander steadfastly refused all offers of
wheeled transport as incompatible with the efficiency
of a genuine light infantry. Thus equipped and pro-
visioned they had been known to cover five hundred
and fifty miles in twenty-two days, and even six
hundred miles within the three weeks. Most of their
officers carried rifles ; and the privates underwent a
searching test in practical shooting before they were
admitted into the ranks. No one was accounted a
marksman who could not hit a very small object, with
absolute certainty, at the range of sixty yards ; and
English prisoners saw with astonishment Virginian
riflemen holding a piece of board at arm's length, or
^ Kephart's Birth of the American Army.
2 Morgan himself wore the breech-clout during Benedict Arnold's
fearful midwinter march through the Maine wilderness to Quebec. When
George Washington was serving against the French, in 1758, he held a
strong opinion on this subject. " If I were left," he said, " to pursue my
own inclinations, I would not only order the men to adopt the Indian
dress, but cause the officers to do it also, and be the first to set the
example myself." In the full trappings of the costume he would have
made a most majestic Sachem.
STILLWATER 1 53
even between their thighs, as a target for their com-
rades.^
Schuyler had by this time recovered, — or, to speak
more accurately, had acquired, — the confidence of his
soldiers. The military situation was fast becoming
little short of excellent. General Lincoln, with two
thousand infantry, watched his opportunity to pounce
upon Ticonderoga ; smaller bands of well-armed par-
tisans already made themselves busy and troublesome
at this point, or that, of Burgoyne's communica-
tions ; and Stark, who now at last had been made a
Major General, wrote that he was coming into camp
with the heroes of Bennington. A few days more, and
Arnold would be back from the Mohawk, bringing his
eight hundred volunteers, intact and jubilant, as well
as a large contingent of militia from Tryon County
whose services were no longer required for the defence
of their homes. Whenever the shock of battle came
Schuyler would be able to put in line ten thousand
men, many of whom had recently fought and conquered ;
while the rest were stirred to emulation by the two
notable victories which had been gained, (as his friends
and admirers might reasonably claim,) under his
auspices. A marked change had taken place in the
feeling entertained by the New England troops towards
a general who had learned to treat them with the con-
sideration and the civility which they regarded as their
due, and who fed them always well, and sometimes at
his own cost. Philip Schuyler had retrieved his repu-
tation in the eyes of every fair and unprejudiced man ;
but unfortunately such men were not a majority in
1 Lieutenant Anburey's 68th letter, "from Jones's Plantation, near
Charlottesville in Virginia ; " Aug. 4, 1779. His evidence on this point is
borne out by many witnesses of similar feats. On one such occasion the
men proposed to shoot apples off each other's heads ; but the spectators
would not permit it.
A year from this time Lafayette, at the head of a detached force
which included some of Morgan's people, gained a success over the
Hessians. " I ought to tell you," he wrote to Washington, " that the
riflemen ran the whole day in front of my horse without eating or
resting."
154 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Congress. The improved condition of the Northern
army sorely disturbed the minds of his poHtical adver-
saries, who were in a hurry to ruin him before he had
the opportunity of winning a victory which would
establish him permanently and inexpugnably in the
gratitude of his countrymen. An apt weapon for their
purpose lay within easy reach ; for General Gates now
almost lived in the lobbies of the House. His two
fixed ideas were his own re-instatement in command,
and Schuyler's downfall ; and he was encircled by
flatterers and dependents who did not allow either his
ambition, or his resentment, to slumber. His principal
staff-officer was Colonel Wilkinson, a youth of extrava-
gant pretensions and very poor qualities, — the fitting
jackal for such a lion. He fetched and carried for
Gates while that general's fortunes were in the ascen-
dant, and betrayed him as soon as ever those fortunes
showed the first signs of waning. Like master, like
man ; and the moral and intellectual relation of James
Wilkinson to Alexander Hamilton was much the same
as that of Horatio Gates to George Washington.
When General Schuyler, in the early June of 1777,
was restored to the Northern army, Wilkinson en-
couraged his own chief to view the action of Congress
as a personal outrage on his dignity and his deserts.
**They have injured themselves;" (he wrote;) "they
have insulted you ; and by so doing they have been
guilty of the foulest ingratitude." It was no hard matter
even for a foohsh aide-de-camp to push Gates across the
narrow confines of his self-control. He hurried away
to Philadelphia, and, on what was Httle better than
a false pretence, he obtained leave to address Congress.
His speech was entirely concerned with personal topics,
and unbecoming to the last degree. After a while the
New York members moved that the General should be
ordered to withdraw. A debate ensued, and speedily
degenerated into an unseemly tumult. Gates remained
standing on the floor, and took his part among the
noisiest; but at last, with much difficulty, he was got
STILLWATER 1 55
outside the doors. Such an exhibition would have
been fatal to the military career of any ordinary man ;
but the New England delegates forgave anything, and
everything, to one whom they regarded as a favourite
son. His friends continued to work on his behalf
indefatigably, and in the end successfully. Schuyler
was deprived of his command ; and, on the nineteenth
of August, Gates arrived at Albany with a commis-
sion to supersede him.
To his great surprise, he found himself very far
from universally welcome. Arnold and Lincoln had
come north, at Washington's earnest request, for the
express purpose of strengthening Schuyler's hands ; and
they were taken aback by being called upon, at a
moment's notice, and for no intelligible public object,
to transfer their loyalty to a man whom they neither
liked nor trusted. Gates was still less acceptable to
the private soldiers ; for they knew him only as an
absentee general who, all through the previous winter,
had displayed the most heartless indifference to the
sufferings of his famished and death-stricken army.
Nothing except the unsparing exertion of John Stark's
personal influence kept the brigades which had fought
at Bennington from marching straight home to New
Hampshire. Schuyler himself received his successor
in a friendly manner, and with proffers of counsel
and support which were churlishly rejected. It has
been well said that the supreme of good taste rarely
had more perfect illustration than in Philip Schuyler's
conduct at this trying moment, and throughout the
many years of life which still remained to him.
''Whether the Resolution of Congress," (so he wrote
to George Washington,) "at this critical juncture was
a wise one, time must determine. I shall go on doing
my duty, and endeavouring to deserve your esteem."
That pledge was nobly kept. Schuyler's modest self-
effacement under the infliction of a cruel wrong, and
his continued devotion to the national cause when the
triumph of that cause could no longer bring glory or
156 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
profit to himself, are an indisputable title to the respect
of posterity.
Meanwhile the personal relations between the British
general and his subordinates were in honourable
contrast to the jealousies which overset Schuyler.
Fraser, and Phillips, and Hamilton were heartily loyal
to Burgoyne. They attributed to his skill in leadership
those successes which had marked the opening of the
campaign ; and they did not hold him responsible for
the manifold difficulties and dangers which now encom-
passed the army. No one aspired to displace him in
his command ; and, indeed, the situation was such that
the most ambitious and self-reliant of military men
would have been disinclined to envy him. For by this
time Burgoyne was painfully aware that the Ministry at
home, deluded by their own obstinate preconceptions,
and misled by erroneous information, had sent him,
very ill-provided, on an all but hopeless mission.
Those resources of local Toryism, which occupied so
large a space in letters addressed to Cabinet Ministers
from their correspondents in America, proved to be
scanty and unreliable within the boundaries of New
York State; and on the east of the Hudson River they
were altogether non-existent. The country, indeed,
had risen ; but not for the King. Burgoyne very soon
found occasion to tell Lord George Germahie that there
was daily reason to doubt the sincerity and the resolu-
tion of professing Loyalists. *' I have," he said, " about
four hundred, (but not half of them armed,) who may
be depended upon. The rest are trimmers merely
actuated by interest. The great bulk of the country
is undoubtedly with the Congress, in principle and in
zeal ; and their measures are executed with a secrecy
and despatch that are not to be equalled. The Hamp-
shire Grants in particular, a country unpeopled and
almost unknown in the last war, now abounds in the
most active and most rebellious race of the Continent,
BEMIS'S HEIGHTS I 57
and hangs like a gathering storm upon my left." ^ For
the space of thirty leagues along the flank of Bur-
goyne's advance the land was inhabited by that martial
population from which the Green Mountain Boys had
been recruited ; and five or six thousand royal infantry,
stationed in rear of his marching army, would have been
none too many to keep him in touch with Canada. But
the troops whom Burgoyne could spare for the pro-
tection of his communications were so few that he
might as well have spared none at all. His small and
isolated garrisons seldom ventured to stir outside their
fortifications, and did not even feel very safe within
them. He was soon entirely cut off from England.
The last despatches which he thought it safe to trans-
mit northwards left his headquarters at Fort Edward
in the first week of September ; and the last which
came to hand in Downing Street were dated the
twentieth August.^
Burgoyne's fighting strength had been very seriously
drained by losses in battle, and by the necessity of
detaching troops enough to make at least an appear-
ance of guarding his communications. He had now
with him seven hundred Provincials, who were good
for very little ; seventeen hundred Germans ; some
twenty score artillery men ; and only three thousand
effective British infantry. In numbers they were a
forlorn hope rather than an invading host ; but their
spirit was such that the honour of our country would,
in the worst event, be safe in their keeping. Their
discipline and valour left nothing to be desired ; but
certain incidents in the recent action at Hubbardtown
aroused anxiety in the minds of those who had closely
and intelligently watched the character of the fighting.
^ Burgoyne to Lord George Germaine ; Aug. 20, 1777.
'■^ Burgoyne, gentleman that he was, had resolved that at the very
earliest opportunity General Riedesel should see something of the wife who
had come all the way from Brunswick to be with hirn, and he despatched
an officer to escort Madame Riedesel to the camp. According to the
lady's account she reached Fort P>iward on the i8th August, and a few
days after her arrival news came that the army was cut off from Canada.
158 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
The British officers who had been shot were ominously
many in proportion to our loss of rank and file. The
American rifle-balls, as was only too evident, did not
fly at random ; while, except in the picked companies of
Light Infantry, the majority of our soldiers were very
far short of taking rank as marksmen. It was not
their own fault. The experience of two contested
campaigns ought to have brought home to every
colonel, who had a soul above that of a drill-sergeant,
the vast difference between the conditions of American
and European warfare ; and the long leisure of winter-
quarters should have been devoted by our company
officers to instructing the private in the familiar and
efficient use of his firelock. Too much was said at
our mess-tables about the superiority of our own people
when it came to a push of bayonet. The just reputa-
tion of that weapon, at the muzzle of an English
musket, would have been maintained by Burgoyne's
regiments against any infantry that ventured to meet
them in line or column ; but it was quite another matter
where the arena of conflict was obstructed, at frequent
intervals, by a labyrinth of fallen trunks, and entangled
branches, through which Morgan's Scouts, and Stark's
lumbermen from the White Mountains of New Hamp-
shire, could travel three yards for every two that were
accomplished by their adversaries.^ Such a considera-
tion, however, troubled very few officers, and none of
the common men ; and the idea of a forward movement
was all the more popular because it was confidently
anticipated that, as soon as Burgoyne attacked the
rebels in front, Sir William Howe would assail and
overwhelm them in the rear.
^ Lieutenant Anburey, from observations made at the battle of Hub-
bardtown, came to the conclusion that our manual exercise was " but an
ornament," and that the only object of real importance was to teach the
soldier to load coolly, and aim steadily. "The confusion," (he wrote,)
" of a man's ideas during the time of action, brave as he may be, is
undoubtedly great. Several of the men, upon examining their muskets,
after all was over, found five or six cartridges which they were positive
to having discharged."
BEMIS'S HEIGHTS I59
That belief was of faith, and not of knowledge. On
the thirtieth July, under private seal to Lord George
Germaine, Burgoyne made a statement of the utmost
gravity. *' I have spared," he wrote, "no pains to open
a correspondence with Sir William Howe. I have
employed the most enterprising characters, and offered
very promising rewards ; but of ten messengers sent
at different times, and by different routes, not one is
returned to me, and I am in total ignorance of the situ-
ation or intentions of that General." The most that
Burgoyne had been able to ascertain was that two of
his own couriers had been hanged ; and he conjectured
that the same fate had overtaken all the emissaries who
were bringing him letters from the Commander-in-Chief
of our southern army. If he waited for news from
Sir William Howe, he might wait till doomsday. To
remain where he was, meant starvation. A retreat
towards Canada would be inglorious, most certainly
perilous, and perhaps impracticable. Safety, honour,
and plenty lay in front, if they lay anywhere; and,
from the general in command to the smallest drummer-
boy, the one and sole desire of the whole British army
was to keep advancing until they ran up against the
enemy.
Burgoyne only stayed until he had amassed pro-
visions enough to serve him as far as Albany ; and on
the thirteenth September he crossed the Hudson River
on a solid bridge of boats. Our army lay that evening
hard by the village of Saratoga, some ten miles to the
eastward of the famous modern watering-place which
goes by the name of Saratoga Springs.^ The view from
camp reminded our officers of the fairest, and most
visibly prosperous, scenes in their own country ; and
some of them felt a movement of generous compassion
for the unhappy people who had been scared, perhaps
1 Readers will do well to consult the large-scale, partially coloured,
map of Saratoga and Bemis's Heights at the end of this chapter. It
has been carefully prepared, and will, (it is hoped,) render the last stage
of the campaign completely intelligible.
l6o THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
for ever, from their beautiful home. Immediately to
the south meandered a rivulet broken into artificial
cascades, and trained around tiny wooded islands ; in
obedience to that theory of the picturesque which was
fashionable during the third quarter of the Eighteenth
Century. On the opposite bank the Schuyler mansion
stood at the head of a lawn inclining gently downwards
to the stream. Beds of fruit-trees and vegetables,
bordered by great masses of bright flowers, had been
arranged in the English taste by gardeners imported
from Europe ; and the house itself, — two-storied, and
of spacious dimensions, — showed *' a row of imposing
pillars extending its entire length from ground to roof."
The architecture resembled that of Washington's Vir-
ginian abode ; and the domestic life, and rural indus-
tries, of Philip Schuyler's establishment were organised
on the same lines as at Mount Vernon, but on a far
larger scale. A regular service of sloops, laden with
produce, had been used to ply to and fro between
Schuylerville and the Southern markets ; the plough-
men, the millers, the foresters, and the artisans in the
General's employment were counted by hundreds ; and
his home-farm was as large as the entire estate of a
rich English squire. His celebrated cornfields, glowing
with ripened grain, extended for three continuous miles
along the alluvial flats of the Hudson River. Most of
the crop was still standing, a legitimate prize of war ;
and within the next twenty-four hours the wheat had
been cut for the use of our regimental bakers, and the
maize as forage for our horses.^ Through this smiling
region Burgoyne moved in the direction of Albany at
the rate of one mile a day ; for the provident diligence
1 Madame Schuyler had paid a flying visit to her country-house in
the hope of rescuing the choicest pieces in her fine collection of furniture.
Before returning to Albany, in the spirit of a matron of ancient Rome,
she set fire to the corn with her own hand. Her negro attendant was
paralysed by his distress at the notion of so much good hominy being
wasted ; and the lady's unassisted efforts at destruction, though they
have been commemorated by painters and engravers as a notable example
of patriotism, produced very limited results.
SEMIS'S HEIGHTS l6l
of his American adversary had spoiled the roads, and
laid every bridge in ruins. Parallel to the line of march,
a fleet of nearly two hundred barges dropped down the
Hudson, carrying the baggage, the ordnance-stores, and
a month's supply of food. The money value of their
cargo amounted to a king's ransom ; for, (according to
an elaborate calculation which found its way into London
newspapers,) every pound of salt meat on board that
flotilla had already cost British taxpayers the sum of
thirty shillings.
Burgoyne moved slowly ; but he had no great dis-
tance to traverse, inasmuch as the enemy had come
halfway to meet him. Straight across his path, two
leagues to the south of Saratoga, and nearly as far to
the north of Stillwater, rose an abrupt table-land with
a front of three quarters of a mile, separated from the
Hudson River by a strip of low-lying pasture not five
hundred yards across. This very defensible ridge,
known as Bemis's Heights, had been selected by Bene-
dict Arnold for the site of an intrenchment. Thaddeus
Kosciusko — an exile from Poland for a love-story, and
not for politics — had placed his rare gifts at the service
of a less ill-starred Revolution than that with which
his name is romantically and pathetically associated.
Throwing into the duties of a military engineer his fiery
energy, and something of his national tendency towards
the grandiose, he had crowned Bemis's Heights with a
stronghold which resembled a citadel rather than a
temporary field-work. The events that ensued present
a striking illustration of the fatal attraction which the
apparent security of a fortress has so often exercised
upon the mind of a timid and incompetent general.
Gates had many more troops than Burgoyne, and his
parapets and ditches were impregnable as against direct
assault. He had regiments enough, over and above
the garrison of his solid earthworks, to prolong his line
of battle so far to the westward that the British would
be unable to turn the American left, or even to save
themselves from being out-flanked and surrounded.
VOL. IV. M
1 62 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
But such a conception was altogether beyond the moral
and intellectual faculties of this miserable self-seeker ;
and he disposed his army in such a fashion that, if he
had been abandoned to himself, he could not have
escaped defeat and disgrace, and very probably would
have been overtaken by a crushing disaster. His plan
of action, so far as it was permitted to develop itself,
consisted in cooping up all his brigades either inside
his breastworks, or on the narrow flat between the hill
and the river. There, in the insensate belief that his
adversaries would run their heads, wantonly and obsti-
nately, against his impenetrable bulwarks, he awaited
the approach of a hostile force admirably trained in
manoeuvres, and conducted by a thorough soldier who
had not in his whole nature a single particle of stupidity.
Burgoyne, who was well-read in military history,
must have been reminded of the Duke of Marlborough's
great opportunity at Blenheim, where the French com-
mander had crowded a score of battalions into a barri-
caded village on his extreme flank, with their backs to
a deep river. But now Marshal Tallard was outdone
by General Gates, who had concentrated behind forti-
fications, in one corner of his position, not the fourth
part, but the whole, of his army ; and who did not
think it necessary to have any left wing, or any centre,
at all. Although fully aware that he was greatly out-
numbered, Burgoyne nevertheless descried the possi-
bility of a very brilliant success ; and he adopted the
proper measures for obtaining it. His left wing, includ-
ing the German contingent, and all the heavy artillery,
was entrusted to General Phillips, who would know
when to hold his hand, and how and where to strike.
On the right wing General Fraser was to march with the
Grenadiers and Light Infantry ; while Burgoyne, at the
head of four slender English battalions, and as many
field-pieces, placed himself in the centre, where the
fighting promised to be hottest. The scheme of battle
had been maturely considered and concerted between
the leaders of the three columns. Phillips undertook
BEMIS'S HEIGHTS 1 63
to keep Gates in play. In the meantime Burgoyne
and Fraser would occupy the high ground immedi-
ately to west of that intrenched enclosure in which
the Americans were penned, enfilade their lines with
cannon, assail them with the bayonet in flank and rear,
and push their ill-commanded and disheartened army
into and across the Hudson River. Victory could not
fail to produce immense captures of men and material,
as well as a greater reward yet ; for the road would be
open to Albany.^
Those were Burgoyne's hopes, and, (with such a
sorry tactician in face of him,) they may even be called
his reasonable expectations ; but Gates was fated to be
saved, in spite of himself, from the worst consequences
of his own fatuity. All through the morning of the
nineteenth September the glitter of steel weapons, and
the passage of scarlet uniforms across vistas in the
forest, indicated to American scouts that something
important was afoot within the British lines ; and very
early in the afternoon three loud explosions, at strictly
measured intervals, were recognised in both camps as a
signal for the onset. Gates issued no orders, and evinced
no disposition to operate outside his ramparts ; but
General Arnold, a very formidable petitioner, " begged
and entreated " to be allowed to assume the offensive
with at least a portion of his own Division. ^ He gave
his superior officer no peace until he had extorted a
sulky and grudging permission to march against the
advancing enemy with Morgan's riflemen, and a scanty
detachment of Massachusetts infantry. Arnold looked
the soldier, from head to heel, as he urged his charger
down the western slope of Bemis's Heights. He was of
dark complexion, with black hair and light eyes, of
athletic build and middling stature. " There wasn't
^ Gates had a bridge over the Hudson ; but, if the Americans were
beaten, their retreat would have to be effected under the fire of General
Phillips's battering guns, with Burgoyne's infantry closing in upon them
from behind.
2 Letter of Colonel Varick from camp ; September 22, 1777.
m2
164 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
any waste timber in him. He was our fighting general.
It was * Come on, boys ! ' It wasn't, *Go, boys ! ' He
didn't care for nothing. He'd ride right in." That was
a description of Benedict Arnold, given many years
afterwards by one of those New Englanders who on
this occasion followed him into action. It would have
been well for him if, at sun-down on that autumn
evening, he had been laid, — dead, safe, and honoured,
— in a warrior's grave.
The country into which Arnold led his people was
singularly adapted for assisting an audacious general to
make a good fight against superior numbers ; and he
was so weak-handed as to need all advantages that the
ground could give him. He was among a wilderness
of trees and undergrowth, deeply scored by ravines,
and interspersed here and there with open patches of
grass which the farmers in those parts denominated
"clever meadows." Everything was in favour of the
belligerent who was most at home in the woods ; and
the Americans, without hesitation, — and, in the first
stage of the conflict, with an excess of temerity, — flung
themselves against the right wing of the Royal army.
The Canadian and Indian skirmishers, who covered
General Eraser's front, were driven in, and required
very little driving ; but so headlong was Morgan's
charge that his men got out of hand, and were scattered
far and wide through the thicket. Some of them were
cut off and captured ; and, when our picked companies
of Grenadiers and Light Infantry joined in the fray, the
British musketry became too sustained and well-directed
for the Americans to face. It is impossible, after the
lapse of a century and a quarter, to ascertain the exact
particulars of a complicated struggle where the com-
batants who were engaged could seldom see ten yards
in front of them ; but it is certain that, in this quarter
of the field, Arnold could make no progress, and was
hard put to it in order to hold his own.
The next phase of the affair, however, was definite
enough ; and the clearest statement of it is by an EngHsh
BEMIS'S HEIGHTS 1 65
historian who then served as a non-commissioned officer
in Burgoyne's army. The Americans, (so ex-Sergeant
Lamb wrote,) found themselves unable to penetrate
at the point where they began the attack ; and they
accordingly ** countermarched, and directed- their prin-
cipal effort against the centre." ^ That section of the
Royal army was posted in some cultivated enclosures
surrounding a small dwelling-house called Freeman's
Farm. It. was a clearing in the forest, of oblong shape,
three hundred yards in extent from east to west,
sloping gently southwards, and skirted everywhere by
dense and lofty timber. Here General Hamilton,
under Burgoyne's own eye, had stationed his guns, and
drawn up the four battahons which composed his
brigade. The Twentieth, the Twenty-first, and the
Sixty-second were ranked in front ; and the Ninth was
in support. Arnold had meanwhile been joined by
some other portions of his own command, — New
Hampshire men. New Yorkers, and a strong and very
eager regiment from Connecticut ; and Colonel Morgan,
who at one time found himself almost alone in the
woods with something Hke despair at his heart, lustily
sounded his ''turkey call," and once more collected the
most of his rifle-men around him.'-^
There, at three in the afternoon, commenced the
real battle ; and a stiff bout it was. Senior officers,
who had witnessed the hardest fighting that the Seven
Years' War had to show, declared that they never
experienced so long and hot a fire. Burgoyne earned
admiration by his serene courage, and his cool and
business-like attention to the military necessities of
the moment amidst a whirlpool of peril and confusion.
The opposing parties surged backwards and forwards
across the narrow space between them ; and the attack
1 An original and authentic Journal of Occurrences during the late
American War ; by R. Lamb, late Sergeant in the Royal Welsh
Fusiliers. Dublin; 1809.
'^ Morgan habitually employed, in place of a bugle, the bird-call by
which Western hunters lured the wild turkeys within rifle-shot.
l66 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
and defence were sometimes intermingled for many
minutes together. A couple of hundred Connecticut
militiamen, in a hurry to settle accounts for the burn-
ing of Danbury, advanced so deep into the British
position that half of them were killed or taken. Some
noted American marksmen perched themselves among
the upper branches of high trees, and used their rifles
with terrible accuracy. Of twenty British officers
struck by bullets at Freeman's Farm, ten were shot
dead. Next morning three subalterns of the Twentieth
Regiment, none of whom had reached the age of
seventeen, were interred in the same grave. Those
of our battalions which stood in the first line lost
three hundred and fifty out of a total strength of
eight hundred. By the end of the fourth hour not
seventy privates remained unhurt in the ranks of the
Sixty-second. Thirty-six of our forty-eight artillery-
men were slain or disabled, and their battery was
several times over-run by a swarm of American
infantry.^ Victory was for the general who could most
promptly bring up the largest reserves ; but the rein-
forcements that Gates had already sparingly doled out
were the last which he allowed Arnold to receive.^ He
himself, with numerous brigades of fresh and zealous
soldiers at his disposal, refused even to make a demon-
stration for the purpose of distracting, and detaining in
his front, the left wing of the British army. As soon,
therefore, as General Phillips became convinced that
Gates did not mean fighting, he marched, like a trusty
comrade, towards the noise of the cannon ; and, (a very
1 The Americans were unable to make use of the abandoned field-
pieces, because they had no means of igniting the powder. On each occa-
sion the British artillery-men carried away the linstocks, and brought them
back again when the enemy were repulsed, and the guns recovered.
After the captain of the battery had fallen, his successor in command
"had his cap shot off whilst spiking the cannon."
^ On this point the military writers of both nations are all in the same
story. Mr. John Fortescue, in the Eleventh chapter of his Third volume,
says that, if Gates had supplied the additional troops for which he wa?
asked, *• Arnold must certainly have broken the British centre."
BEMIS'S HEIGHTS 1 67
welcome surprise for Burgoyne,) he brought cannon with
him.^ A battery of field-pieces, with ammunition-boxes
full, and the gunners all alive and unwounded, discharged
grape at musket-range among the scattered groups of
exhausted Americans. The vanguard of Riedesel's
Brunswickers next appeared upon the scene. Seven
companies of German infantry advanced into action
at the double; and General Phillips, by his personal
exertions and example, rallied and led forward the
Twentieth, an old Minden regiment which still con-
tained some veterans with whom he had stirring
memories in common. Arnold had now done all that
man could do. When night settled down upon the
carnage and the uproar, he abandoned his ground, and
fell back a few furlongs ; which, in that blind and
tangled region, took him as much out of harm's way as
if his retreat had been extended over as many miles.
On the nineteenth September victory, technically
speaking, rested with Burgoyne ; inasmuch as the
ground which he retained, as the prize of a desperate
encounter, lay a mile and a half in front of the camp
whence he had gone forth to battle. But the general
of a nation which looks back with pride upon many
notable and decisive triumphs sets little store on a
small and doubtful success when he is not in a position
to pursue, and improve, his advantage. Burgoyne had
made arrangements for renewing active operations at
day-break on the twentieth ; but General Fraser repre-
sented to him that the Grenadiers and Light Infantry,
who were to lead the attack, were too fatigued to
behave with their customary spirit ; and General
Hamilton's regiments, for the time being, could not be
taken into account as a fighting force. In the quarter
where that gallant brigade had stood the sun went
down, and rose, upon a melancholy scene. The fields
were thickly strewn with dead bodies, and with a mul-
1 Burgoyne, in his public despatches, warmly acknowledged the ser-
vices rendered by the Artillery ; as has not always heen done by more
fortunate, and much more famous, captains.
1 68 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
titude of wounded whom it had been impossible to
remove so long as the conflict lasted. Our officers
were reminded by certain grim incidents that they
were not now campaigning in the civilised plains of
Germany. Large packs of wolves made night hideous
by their howls. Indians prowled through the surround-
ing forest, scalping the dead and dying who had fallen
among the brushwood, and were with difficulty re-
strained from invading that open space, covered with
English bodies, where the prey which they coveted was
to be found in the greatest abundance. There was no
time to lose ; and friends and foes were buried together,
hastily, and for the most part very unceremoniously.
Burgoyne had persuaded himself, against the evidence
of his acute and practised eyes, that the enemy had
suffered far more heavily than his own army. He
reported the American loss, in an official letter, at two
thousand men ; which was six times the real figure,
and more than two-thirds of the entire force that Bene-
dict Arnold had been able to bring into action.
Burgoyne was always wiser than his own despatches ;
and the tactics which he actually adopted did not
indicate a genuine belief that he had made a great
slaughter of his opponents with a comparatively small
sacrifice of his own soldiers. He countermanded the
orders which he had issued for an aggressive move-
ment ; and the energies of his army were thenceforward
diverted to the construction of fortifications. During
the coming fortnight relays of a thousand men were
constantly at work with spade, and saw, and hatchet.
On the river-bank, in rear of our camp, three redoubts
protected the hospitals, the magazines, and the landing-
place of the barges. The face of the British position,
only a cannon-shot from the American lines, was
covered by a ditch and parapet ; heavy guns, of which
Burgoyne possessed a great store, were disposed in
battery at frequent intervals along the entire front ; and
the timber was felled over a breadth of several hundred
paces, so as to present a clear field for the play of
BEMIS'S HEIGHTS 169
artillery. Every battalion was expected to be under
arms a full hour before dawn.^ Colonel Breymann's
Hessians, who had acquired deserved credit by their
behaviour in the recent engagement, were stationed on
the extreme right. Freeman's Farm, a dearly-bought
acreage, for which it was likely that there would soon
again be eager bidders, was committed to the charge
of Lord Balcarres ; while on the left flank towards the
river, in comparative security, were quartered General
Hamilton's attenuated regiments. Their ranks had
been replenished by a large infusion of Provincial
Loyalists ; and some weeks of hard drilling, at the very
least, were indispensably necessary before the new
drafts could be brought up to the standard of the best
EngHsh infantry. At sunset on the twenty-first Sep-
tember there was a general discharge of artillery from
the American batteries, followed by **a great stir and
shouting " which lasted all through the night. The
cause of this unusual demonstration was not known in
the British camp until, four days subsequently, a cornet
of Brunswick Dragoons, who had been taken at Ben-
nington, was sent across the lines with a message from
Gates. This young officer brought word that General
Lincoln had swooped down upon Burgoyne's com-
munications ; had made himself master of Sugar Hill,
and other outworks of Ticonderoga ; and had captured
three hundred prisoners, as well as several gun-boats,
and the whole of the nine or ten score barges which
were employed on Lake Champlain in transporting
Commissariat and Ordnance Stores for the use of
Burgoyne's fighting army. All our detached posts had
been successively attacked. In some cases the assail-
ants were repelled and very roughly handled ; but the
three or four Royal garrisons, which survived Lincoln's
1 At this point in the progress of the narrative Colonel Gerald Boyle
placed in the hands of the author his manuscript Notes on the War of the
American Revolution. Those notes, under a modest title, form a com-
prehensive store-house of accurate information, arranged with admirable
clearness, and illustrated by sound, and most perceptive, observations and
criticisms.
I/O THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
inroad, were cooped up helplessly within forts and
block-houses, or on small islands in a sheet of water
engirdled by an unfriendly shore.
Burgoyne had now been effectually cut off from
Canada ; and the whole land that lay to the south of
him was an unknown country, enveloped in a cloud of
mystery through which he dimly discerned the menac-
ing features of an immense disappointment. There
began to be something oppressive in the almost un-
broken silence maintained by that personage with whose
intentions and proceedings it was an affair of life and
death for him to be acquainted. In the middle of
September he had received a letter from Sir WilHam
Howe, dated two full months back ; and not a syllable
before or since. This despatch was culpably, — and,
(considering Burgoyne's situation,) almost cruelly, —
vague and brief. Howe foreshadowed, rather than an-
nounced, a plan of marching into Pennsylvania, and
thereby adding another hundred miles to the hundred
and fifty which already separated him from Burgoyne's
army. Sir Henry Clinton, in the meanwhile, was to be
left in command at New York ; and, (to employ Howe's
own careless and nebulous words,) " would act as occur-
rences might direct" Some days afterwards one of
Clinton's messengers arrived with three meagre, and
most disheartening, lines of cipher. Sir Henry ex-
pressed himself as willing, under certain contingencies,
to move North with as large a handful of troops as could
safely be borrowed from the garrison of New York city.^
That was a very different matter from the fine army of
twenty thousand British soldiers whom, (if there had
been any truth in Lord George Germaine's promises, or
any forethought and precision in his military arrange-
ments,) Burgoyne was to have found awaiting him at
1 Sir Henry Clinton's letter ran as follows. " You know my poverty ;
but if with 2,000 men, which is all I can spare from this important post,
I can do anything to facilitate your operations, I will make an attack
upon Fort Montgomery, if you will let me know your wishes." Fort
Montgomery was a Republican stronghold on the Hudson River, a
hundred miles to the South of Albany.
BEMIS'S HEIGHTS 17I
Albany. Reading the two despatches together, the
unhappy general came to the conclusion that Sir William
Howe had forgotten all about him. With very bad
news in rear, and worse than no news from his front
he was at a loss to determine the quarter towards which
his strategical efforts ought henceforward to be di
rected. The impulse which had borne him thus far on
his career gradually died away ; and he lingered, passive
and stationary, at the spot where he had halted, — pray-
ing for some unlikely turn of fortune, consuming his
limited reserve of provisions, and putting a few last
touches of perfection to his elaborate intrenchments.
Burgoyne could complete his preparations for de-
fence at the greater leisure because a quarrel, which
raged at the headquarters of the American army,
distracted the attention, and deadened the alacrity, of
the enemy. Gates, who formerly had been Arnold's
staunchest patron and most warm admirer, had altered
his sentiments ever since that officer came northwards
possessed of Washington's confidence, and in the
character of Schuyler's friend. Thenceforward he
regarded his second in command with distrust which,
after the nineteenth September, was intensified into
bitter jealousy. It has been truly remarked that "but
for Arnold, on that eventful day, Burgoyne would
have marched into Albany at the autumnal equinox, a
victor ; " ^ and yet this inestimable service, which should
by rights have constituted an overpowering claim upon the
gratitude of General Gates, assumed in his jaundiced
view the complexion of an unpardonable injury. In the
report of the battle which he sent to Congress no
mention whatever was made of Arnold, nor of Arnold's
division ; although it is hardly too much to say that
every soldier, who took part in the combat, belonged
to one or other of Arnold's regiments.^ So flagrant
^ Lossing's Life of Schuyler; Vol. II., Chapter 19.
2 At the very last moment, in the gloom of evening, a few companies
of Massachusetts infantry, from ancjther general's command, were sent to
Arnold's support ; and they certainly did their best to make up for lost
time.
172 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
an injustice provoked from the slighted general a
written remonstrance which was acrimoniously, and
even contemptuously, resented by his superior officer.
Gates, only too well aware that Arnold's temper was
a short one, deliberately entered upon a most artful
system of annoyance and provocation. He disobliged
his eminent subordinate by a series of petty ill-services,
plied him to his face with studied insults, and in his
absence filled the air with sarcasms which were intended
to reach his ears. Colonel Wilkinson, who knew how
to please his chief, set afloat a story that Arnold had
taken no personal share in the battle, and had remained
safe in camp as long as bullets were flying ; ^ but that
tale was, for the present, circulated only in whispers
and in private letters, for Arnold's aides-de-camp had
the reputation of being fiery fellows.^ The victim of
this cowardly persecution, before very long, came to
the end of his patience ; and, at the close of a stormy
interview, he asked Gates for permission to leave the
army and retire to Philadelphia. When the news got
abroad, the rank and file were excited and indignant ;
large numbers of regimental officers openly protested
in terms which, according to strict military notions,
were not without a savour of mutiny ; and the generals
signed a memorial entreating their distinguished com-
rade to remain with them for at least one more
battle. Touched by such an expression of feeling,
Arnold declared himself willing to postpone his resig-
nation ; but the command of his division was with-
drawn from him, and he was no longer invited to
attend at Councils of War. He could not, however,
^ This impudent falsehood has been judged worthy of refutation by
several excellent historians, who have shown " by an overwhelming
weight of evidence " that Arnold was in the battle of the nineteenth
September. One might as well demand evidence to prove that Nelson
was in the sea-fight off Cape St. Vincent.
2 Colonel Henry Livingston, who had been on Schuyler's staff, and
now was on Arnold's, fought a duel " about a matter growing out of
the quarrel between Gates and Arnold." Life of Benedict Arnold \
Chapter IX.
BEMIS'S HEIGHTS 1 73
find the heart to tear himself away from the neighbour-
hood of the army ; and Benedict Arnold still continued
to haunt the camp as if he were an amateur civilian
curious to see what a battle was like, and to experience,
for once in his lifetime, the novel sensation of being
under fire.
Gates got quit of Arnold with the less compunction
because he had at his disposal a substitute whom he
professed to regard as the better soldier of the two.
When General Lincoln had done all that he was able
to accomplish against Ticonderoga, he was summoned
to Bemis's Heights, and appointed second in command
of the Northern army. He remonstrated earnestly
against his own promotion, and used his best endeavours
to reconcile his angry colleagues ; but Gates was in-
exorable ; and, at such a crisis in the fortunes of his
cause, Lincoln was too good a patriot to refuse a post
of danger even for the most honourable and disinterested
of motives. The Americans, — in numbers, in temper,
and in aptitude for the sort of fighting which they had
on hand, — now constituted a force with which any
general might proudly and confidently serve. Lincoln
himself had brought with him from the Lakes a rein-
forcement of two thousand men. The Governors of
Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts had
already sent forward as many battalions of militia as
they could provide with officers ; and the ranks of
those battalions were still in course of being recruited
by a process which vividly illustrates the national
character, and the special circumstances, of this ex-
traordinary war. From every State in New England
during the last fortnight there had poured, or trickled,
into camp a stream of armed citizens who might have
hesitated to encounter the delays and disgusts of a pro-
tracted campaign, but who knew that a sharp and final
battle was imminent, and had made up their minds to
see that battle through. The older farmers, who would
not be troubled to drill, and who never felt comfort-
able outside their working garments, went forth from
174 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
their homes on horseback singly, or in small parties.
They presented an unmilitary, and sometimes a rather
grotesque, appearance on the road ; ^ but they looked
business-like enough when loading and firing impertur-
bably from behind a judiciously selected tree in the
foremost line of skirmishers. The periodical return of
effectives in Gates's army was always larger than that
of the week before, and always below the truth. His
force was estimated at between thirteen and fourteen
thousand men ; and he still was engaged in extending
and strengthening his fortifications as diligently as if
the adversaries in front of him had been in the pro-
portion of two to one, instead, at the very utmost, of
one to three.
Burgoyne's followers dwindled almost as quickly as
his foes increased. The condition of the Royal army
was already very miserable. Three months spent
among the brambles by day, and in damp bivouacs at
night, had reduced the uniforms to tatters. There was
no spare clothing ; no wine or coffee ; no sustenance
except salt pork and flour even for the sick and
wounded. The grass in the meadows by the riverside
had very soon been eaten, and many horses died of
sheer starvation. Our people were altogether debarred
from availing themselves of the inviting and multifarious
resources with which that teeming valley abounded.
Too few for the adequate protection of their threatened
earthworks, they could not detach covering-parties
large enough to ensure the safety of their foragers.
The Americans, on the other hand, who had very few
1 At a later period in the war a British officer, who met one of these
people on the march, was reminded of Don Quixote, than whom there
have been many worse soldiers. The Yankee horseman was described as
sitting bolt upright, in stirrups which the toe could but just reach, his
long lank visage crowned by a grizzled wig and a large flap-hat ; saddle-
bags behind him, provision-bags in front, and his " blazing-iron " on his
shoulder. He bestrode a gaunt steed with a long switch-tail and mane
down to the knees, which shuffled along at the pace of eight or nine
miles an hour. It was, (according to English ideas,) "an unaccountable
wriggling gait, that, till you are accustomed to it, you are more fatigued
in riding two miles than in a whole day's fox-chase."
BEMIS'S HEIGHTS 1 75
routine duties to occupy their time and damp their
spirits, regarded the war of outposts as an animating
pastime. The woods were full of them ; and a day
seldom passed on which some act of audacity was
not successfully attempted by Republican soldiers or
partisans. Forty or fifty seamen from Burgoyne's
flotilla were made prisoners while searching for food in
the deserted plantations on the east shore of the Hudson
River; several of our privates, who were digging up
potatoes in a field only a quarter of a mile to rear of
the British headquarters, were surprised and captured ;
and thirty others were surrounded and carried off by
a troop of young farmers from the nearest township
who were out on a frolic with their shot-guns. While
an enemy was bustling around them from dawn to
dusk, and sometimes all through the night, the Royal
troops suffered painfully from want of sleep ; and that
infliction fell with special severity upon our officers, who
during this trying campaign accepted a noble equality
with the rank and file in discomfort and privation, and
had very much more than their due share of wounds,
and toil, and watching.^
In the first week of October the army was placed
upon a two-thirds ration. Hope had by this time
departed from every breast, and the void created by
its loss was in many cases not supplied by a sense of
duty. The Indians were the first to slip away north-
wards, and were soon followed by most of the Canadians
and the local Tories. Desertions became alarmingly
frequent among the English and German regiments.
The edge of the forest, where the runaways found a
sure haven, was everywhere close at hand; and the
Royal camp was infested by Republican emissaries, in
the guise of Loyalists, who promised the over-worked
^ "I do not believe," Burgoyne wrote, "that either officer or soldier
ever slept during this interval without his clothes, or that any General
officer, or commander of a regiment, passed a single night without being
on his legs, occasionally at different hours, and constantly an hour before
daylight."
176 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
and under-fed soldiers that, when they once reached
the American lines, they would find the best of good
living, and a discipline incomparably less strict than in
the most lax of European armies. Burgoyne called his
three principal lieutenants together, exposed the situa-
tion frankly, and asked for suggestions and advice.
General Riedesel pronounced himself in favour of an
instant withdrawal towards Lake George and Ticon-
deroga; and his view was shared by General Eraser,
while General Phillips declined to give any opinion
whatsoever. Burgoyne thereupon intimated that, if he
and his troops were alone concerned, he should com-
mence his retreat at daybreak on the morrow ; but he
reminded the gallant men with whom he was conversing
that greater interests than their own were at stake.
The loss of their line of escape to Canada would be a
partial and remediable misfortune for England ; but, if
the pressure were taken off General Gates, that officer
would forthwith lead his fourteen thousand men to the
assistance of General Washington. Sir William Howe,
in all probability, would be defeated and destroyed ;
the war would come to a sudden and calamitous ter-
mination ; and the colonies would be lost to the King.
Burgoyne further remarked, — commenting quietly, and
most justly, upon Lord George Germaine's unqualifiable
conduct, — that his own army had evidently been in-
tended from the very first to be hazarded, and that
circumstances had now arrived which might require it
to be devoted. He would therefore, (he said,) make one
more attempt, by operating against the left flank of
the enemy, to discover whether there still remained
any possibility of forcing, sword in hand, a passage to
Albany.
On the morning of the seventh October Burgoyne
issued from his lines with all, and more than all, the
force which he could prudently withdraw from the
garrisons of his numerous redoubts. He advanced in
a south-westerly direction to a point within a short
distance of the American intrenchments ; halted in a
BEMIS'S HEIGHTS 1 77
large field of uncut wheat; and deployed his troops
behind the fences, and amidst the standing corn.
Lord Balcarres, with the Light Infantry, took post
upon the right. Then came the Twenty-Fourth regi-
ment, and several thin battalions of Germans; while on
the extreme left stood our Grenadiers under Major
Acland, who had been wounded at Hubbardtown, but
was so cleverly and assiduously nursed by his wife that
he contrived not to miss a single battle. Six British,
and four Hessian, cannon were planted in groups all
along the centre of the array, on convenient spots of
rising ground. The various sections of the line were
under the charge of Riedesel, Phillips, and Simon
Fraser; every one of whom was fit to command an
army corps, instead of a poor five hundred infantry
apiece. This meaningless and objectless military ex-
pedition, which on Burgoyne's part was a counsel of
despair, was dignified by the title of a ** reconnaissance
in force;" but that is a misnomer, for our people
could learn nothing about the lie of the country
or the situation of the enemy, and they did not even
discern any signs of the tempest which was gathering
a few hundred paces in their immediate front. At
four in the afternoon a perfect deluge of assailants un-
expectedly and simultaneously bore down upon them
with equal violence in every quarter. Colonel Morgan
with fifteen hundred men, — as many as all the Royal
troops together, — attacked Balcarres in front and rear ;
and nearly the whole of two powerful brigades marched
steadily and rapidly against Acland. As soon as the
Americans came into view '* a terrible discharge of
musket-balls and grape made great havoc among the
branches of the trees over their heads." But our gun-
ners and our Grenadiers soon got the range ; a conflict
ensued, marked by splendid rivalry in valour; the
fighting was at close quarters, and often hand to hand ;
and some of the field-pieces were taken, and re-taken,
five times over. The mere vicinity of such a pande-
monium was destructive to the composure of ordinary
VOU. IV. N
178 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
soldiers. A Brunswick battalion, drawn up next in
line to the right, retired in confusion before it had lost
a man. General Riedesel, and his staff, rode in among
the fugitives with bare swords, and rallied them behind
the Hesse Hanau artillery ; but Acland's flank was laid
open, and the Americans had at least a whole regiment
hotly engaged for every one of his four companies.
The Grenadiers fell back ; and their brave leader,
through no fault of his comrades, remained desperately
wounded in the power of the enemy.^
When the firing began in earnest Arnold was neither
to hold nor to bind, and in a very few minutes he was
spurring towards the front on the swiftest of all his
short-lived animals. Behind him, at an ever increasing
interval, rode one of Gates's aides-decamp with orders to
arrest his progress, and bring him straight back to Head-
quarters. This unfortunate officer followed the chase
during the whole afternoon, and was led in the course
of it through some very dangerous places ; but he would
have been in far greater hazard of his life if he had ever
succeeded in laying his hand on the lapel of Benedict
Arnold's coat. For Arnold, intoxicated by a violent
reaction from the gloomy silence in which he had been
eating his heart during the last fortnight, was not at
this moment master of himself, although on that day
he dominated and inspired, as never before, every one
of his countrymen with whom he came in contact. In
quest of the shortest cut towards the point at which he
was aiming, he galloped midway between the opposing
lines through a shower of crossing bullets ; and, at the
further end of that perilous avenue, he met a strong body
of Massachusetts infantry, who greeted their former
commander with loud huzzas. Giving them the word of
command in a vigorous phrase, which most certainly
1 Acland had been shot through both legs, and he was a large, heavy
man. An English captain carried him as far as his ov/n strength held
out, and then proclaimed that he would give fifty guineas to any soldier
who could bring the Major home alive. " A stout Grenadier instantly
took him on his back, and was hastening into camp when they were
overtaken, and made prisoners."
BEMIS'S HEIGHTS 1 79
was not taken from the pages of an Army Manual, he
brandished his blade in the air, and, with the headlong
energy of a madman, and the infallible instinct of a true
soldier, he launched his three regiments against the
main battle which connected the two wings of Burgoyne's
army. The Germans offered a creditable resistance;
but they were out-matched in number, in enthusiasm,
and, (above all,) in the precision of their fire. Four
Hessian captains fell in quick succession ; Arnold, after
a first rebuff, came storming back again at the head of
his New Englanders ; Burgoyne's centre was broken ;
and, when the infantry left the field, it was impossible
to withdraw the cannon. The teams of draught-horses,
— an easy target for riflemen who could hit a deer
running, — had been shot down ; most of the artillery-
men in Major Williams's battery of six-pounders had
been killed or wounded ; and he, and all his junior
officers, were captured in a last attempt to rescue the
guns without which they did not greatly care to return
to camp.
Meanwhile the British troops on the right wing were
contending manfully against threefold odds. Our Light
Infantrymen, who by this time were proficients in the
tactics of the backwoods, had sheltered themselves be-
hind such cover as was attainable ; while Simon Fraser,
riding continuously and slowly up and down the line on
his iron-grey charger, in the full uniform of a British
general, was the life and soul of the unequal fight, and
the observed of both armies. It was only too evident
that he had attracted the particular attention of a skilled
and persistent marksman. The crupper of his horse
was grazed by a rifle-ball ; almost immediately afterwards
another passed through the mane, just behind the ears ;
and the third traversed Eraser's body. He was carried
away mortally hurt, and the command devolved upon
Lord Balcarres.^ That officer was already hard pressed,
^ Lieutenant Anburey described how General Fraser was brought out
of the fight, supported in the saddle by a friend on either side of his
horse. He was met by officers eagerly inquiring as tt; his wound ; but
N2
l80 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
and in a few more minutes would have been entirely
surrounded. He commenced a retreat, which was saved
from being a calamitous rout by the heroism of his
soldiers. Their perfect discipline, and their readiness
to face about and fight, kept the enemy in respect, and
screened from too close a pursuit the much less orderly
rearward movement of Burgoyne's left and centre.
Success was impossible from the first; but the affair
had been fought out with unusual thoroughness. Five
and twenty British officers had been killed or wounded ;
a hundred soldiers of the royal army were buried in and
about the wheat-field ; and Burgoyne lost every one of
the ten guns he had brought with him into action.
According to an eye-witness, who took the time by his
watch, the engagement had lasted exactly fifty-two
minutes.
There, if it had rested with General Gates, the matter
would have ended. He never left his Headquarters ;
he looked into nothing with his own eyes ; and all that
still remained of the afternoon must have been consumed
in sending him information about the altered position of
affairs, and in waiting for any fresh orders which he
might be pleased to issue. But Benedict Arnold had a
very definite notion of his own about the use to which
the next two hours should be put. Without more ado
he assumed the command of all the troops who were near
enough to hear his voice and obey his vehement gestures,
and marched them in the direction of the British forti-
fications. Burgoyne's right was covered by a field-work
of horseshoe form, where Colonel Breymann had been
stationed with an insufficient force of Brunswick in-
fantry ; while the open space in front of Freeman's
Farm was searched by the fire of a redoubt, with walls
from twelve to sixteen feet in height, flanked by strong
his only answer was a melancholy shake of the head. His sufferings
were horrible. " Did he whose soul was so full of noble and sublime
impulses die here, shot through like some ravening beast?" That reflec-
tion passed through the mind of William Dean Howells when standing
on the spot where Wolfe fell ; and the same thought is irresistibly sug-
gested by the story of Fraser's death-bed.
SARATOGA l8l
intrenchments behind which some heavy guns were
mounted. This was the point against which Arnold's
first attack was levelled ; but Balcarres, who superin-
tended the defence, took care that his artillerymen
should load with grape ; the privates of the Light com-
panies had re-filled their cartridge-boxes ; and the
Americans were handsomely repulsed. Baffled, but not
daunted or depressed, Arnold made a second throw for
victory in another quarter ; and, with the daylight fading
around him, he hurriedly arranged for a combined assault
on the face, and rear, of the German position. His
impetuous onset carried everything before it. Breymann
was killed ; and those of his troops who could not make
their escape laid down their arms, and surrendered them-
selves prisoners by dozens and by scores. Arnold was
pushing in through the sally-port just as their last volley
was fired. His horse rolled over, stone-dead; and his
thigh-bone was shivered by a bullet which a wounded
German discharged from a few paces off. Arnold, who
admired the man's courage, and probably would have
done the same in his place, insisted that the fine fellow,
(as he called him,) should not be bayoneted. It was
the leg that had been injured at Quebec, and the surgeon
talked of amputation ; but the General would not hear
of it. If that, (said Arnold,) was all the doctors could
do for him, they had better lift him on another horse,
and let him see the battle out. He was perhaps the
only man in either army who did not think it already
high time that the battle was over. ^
Night set in ; the clangour of arms ceased ; and
EngUshmen and Americans, in close proximity, flung
themselves exhausted on the ground which they had kept
or won. No fires were lit ; no sentinels challenged ; and
no human sound was heard except the lamentations of
^ These were the circumstances under which the Staff Officer, who
had so long been following Arnold about the field, finally overtook him,
and unburdened himself of his belated message. It was to the effect that
General Gates desired General Arnold to do nothing rash.
1 82 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
the wounded, which in their sad concert were not dis-
tinctive of nationahty. The time and place were such
that the only safety lay in sitting still. A Brunswick
colonel, stung by certain reflections on German valour
with which the intelligence of Arnold's final success was
received at the British Headquarters, collected a small
party of his countrymen, and sallied forth upon a des-
perate attempt to reconquer the abandoned position ;
but he was encountered in the woods by a sham Loyalist,
who conducted him to the hostile lines, where he was
captured with all his officers. Burgoyne knew no sleep
that night, and little enough for many nights to come.
He was far too old and clever a soldier not to recognise
that the great game had gone against him. He had not
sought death, and still less had he shunned it ; but he
went wherever he was wanted on that busy afternoon
without caring whether he were killed or not. His hat
and clothes were pierced with musket-balls ; and his
favourite aide-de-camp had been struck down by his
side, and at that very moment was dying on General
Gates's own bed.^ But Burgoyne himself had come alive
out of the rain of bullets, and it still was incumbent on
him to take what measures he could devise in order to
make the best of an almost hopeless situation.
The Americans were now inside his lines, sheltered
by earth-works which he had himself erected, and with
many of his own cannon ready to be pointed at his own
troops. All his British and German regiments had,
twice or thrice during the course of the expedition,
been tested in battle up to the very limit of their en-
durance, and had lost most of their best and bravest,
and in some cases more than half their entire numbers.
His local allies, whether red or white, had very gener-
ally deserted him ; and those of them who stayed were
^ "As to my life," (he wrote to Sir William Howe,) " I am free from
wounds; though my person, you may imagine, has not been spared."
Burgoyne was able to recommend sergeants for promotion to ensigncies
from his own personal observation of their conduct under fire. Letters of
Oct. 20, and Nov. 26, 1777, in the Report on American Manuscripts in
the Royal Institution of Great Britain.
SARATOGA 183
of no account as warriors. If the army was to be pre-
served from a crushing misfortune Burgoyne could not
afford to waste an hour of daylight, nor of torch-Hght
either. His left wing, which on the seventh October
had not been actively engaged, continued under arms
through the night ; his tents were struck as quietly as
possible ; and, when nothing more remained to be done,
Lord Balcarres aroused his weary soldiers, and marched
them out of the intrenchments which they had so stead-
fastly defended. Burgoyne planted his force half a
mile to the rearward, on some hills which overlooked
the river and the river-road. The position, crowned by
a large redoubt, and enclosed by impenetrable ravines,
was as strong as a fortress ; but it covered an extent of
only fifteen hundred paces square, and was commanded
from end to end by the adversary's artillery. Here
Simon Fraser died after some hours of agony, endured
with rare composure ; and he was carried to a spot
where he himself had desired that he should be buried.
All his brother Generals stood around the grave, and
a clergyman read the Service, slowly and very impres-
sively, from the first sentence to the last, while the heavy
shot threw up the loose earth in showers over and around
him. On the opposite heights there were few or no
telescopes ; and it was some while before the true pur-
pose of the assembly was perceived by the enemy. But
the hostile missiles suddenly ceased ; " and the solemn
voice of a single cannon, at measured intervals, boomed
along the valley, and awakened the responses of the
hills. It was a minute gun fired by the Americans in
honour of the gallant dead." ^
The Republican forces had taken up their ground
within a few furlongs of the British, both on front and
flank ; there was brisk skirmishing throughout the day ;
and towards evening Burgoyne was informed, (as indeed
he must have foreseen without being told,) that General
Gates had commenced to bring round his left wing so
as to pen our army between the Hudson River and a con-
^ Lossing's field Book 0/ the Revolution ; Volume I., Chapter 2.
1 84 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
tinuous semicircle of hostile brigades and batteries.^
Burgoyne was now entangled in one of those distract-
ing, but not altogether insuperable, mazes of difficulty
which put a commanding officer's force of will to the
most severe and crucial proof. Washington had been
in as bad a case after the defeat on Long Island in
August 1776, with half his army on the wrong side of
the channel which separated Brooklyn from the city
of New York. Soult was in a worse plight still when,
in May 1809, his famous adversary had forced the pas-
sage of the Douro. But the French Marshal had the
strength of mind to change his point of view in a single
moment ; to abandon his well-considered plans for a
military victory, and his wild schemes of political am-
bition ; to sacrifice his artillery, and his vast stores of
plunder ; and to struggle through the mountains by
night and day until he had placed his infantry beyond
the risk of capture. Gates, though somewhat less slug-
gish in pursuit than in battle, was not a Sir Arthur
Wellesley ; and, if Burgoyne had sunk his cannon in
the Hudson, had left behind him everything which
travelled upon wheels, had stowed his last week's pro-
visions in the knapsacks of his soldiers, and had made
a series of forced marches broken only by the very
shortest pauses which repose and refreshment impera-
tively demanded, he might have reached Lake George
within fifty or sixty hours, bringing all his men and
muskets with him. That was General Riedesel's view ;
and he was a German veteran who had served on the
weaker side in the Seven Years' War, and was familiar
with the methods by which Frederic the Great, and
Prince Henry of Prussia, had over and over again, to
the astonishment and chagrin of their opponents, extri-
cated themselves and their little armies out of the very
tightest of tight places.
1 In the course of the operations of the eighth October, General
Lincoln received a wound of the same character, and gravity, as that
which on the previous evening prostrated Arnold. Burgoyne's position
on the day after the battle may be clearly traced in the map at the end of
this chapter.
SARATOGA 1 85
To adopt a bold resolution in a supreme emergency
is comparatively easy for a monarch at the head of his
own troops, or for a famous captain of eminent and
established position, and exceptionally masterful char-
acter. Frederic and his brother were royal personages ;
Marshal Soult, unless he is much belied, had aspired to
a throne ; and George Washington was a king by na-
ture ; whereas John Burgoyne was nothing more than
a soldier on his promotion, at the beck and call, — and,
if he met with a disaster, at the far from tender mercy,
— of his official superiors. He was new to high re-
sponsibilities ; he had never before held an independent
command ; and he was only too well aware that the
Minister of State at home, who had sent him forth so
recklessly, and supported him so ineffectively, would
be the first to throw him over if his retirement to
Canada presented the appearance of a flight. Soon
after sunset on the eighth October he commenced a
retreat in strict conformity with the most approved
maxims of the tactical art. General Riedesel led the
way with four or five regiments, and a battery or two
of field pieces ; then came the heavy guns, and a long
train of baggage-carts ; while Burgoyne himself followed
with the main column of infantry. The commissariat
stores were transported by a string of barges which
ascended the Hudson River alongside the army, taking
care to keep as many yards of the current as possible
between themselves and that eastern shore which, when
day appeared, would be alive with American riflemen.
Everything was packed up and taken away ; and nobody
remained in camp except a few hundred dying or dis-
abled men, whom Burgoyne expressly commended by
letter to the generosity of his American adversary. An
hour before midnight the rear guard set forth under
General Phillips and Lord Balcarres, leaving their watch-
fires burning to deceive the enemy. But those fires did
not remain alight long, for the rain came down in floods,
and, (according to the recollection of those exposed to
it,) continued almost without intermission during the
l86 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
whole of the ensuing week. The march was slow, and
toilsome in the extreme ; for the bridges over the small-
est runlets, through which a man on foot could have
waded, had to be repaired in order to let the carriages
pass, and then were broken down once more with a view
of impeding the hostile pursuit. At three next morn-
ing Burgoyne halted, and remained stationary until he
had lost the whole of the start which he gained under
cover of the darkness. His leisurely progress was not
resumed until late in the afternoon, by which time so
much water had fallen that the road was ruined. It was
ten at night before the British, leaving behind them most
of their waggons embedded in the mud, took up their
quarters in and about the Schuyler buildings on the
south bank of the Fishkill Creek. They had consumed
twenty-four hours over a journey of exactly eight miles.
Next morning Burgoyne crossed the Fishkill ; but a
more formidable obstacle lay between him and safety.
To place his army without delay on the eastern shore
of the Hudson River was an imperative duty to which
he should have postponed all other considerations
whatsoever. Early on that tenth October he sent off
Colonel Sutherland, at the head of a sufficient force, with
directions to occupy and repair the bridge of boats
which the Royal Engineers had built four weeks back,
and which still was standing. Sutherland passed his
infantry over the river with no great difficulty, and ad-
vanced until he was almost within sight of Fort Edward ;
but there he was overtaken by a message of recall so
positively worded that he had no choice except to retrace
his steps. He left behind him, on his way back to
camp, a company of provincial Loyalists for the pro-
tection of the work which was in progress at the bridge ;
but they fled as soon as a few shots were fired at them
by a small party of Republicans. They were followed
home, stolidly and reluctantly, by the British artificers,
who reported that their task was already more than
half done, and could most certainly have been finished
before daybreak on the morrow.
SARATOGA 1 8/
The counter-order which had been despatched to
Colonel Sutherland was deplorable, but not quite inex-
plicable ; for at that moment Burgoyne wanted to have
the whole of his small army gathered together on one
spot, and ready to his own hand. His heart was not
in the retreat to Canada, and he even now hankered
after another opportunity of trying conclusions with
the adversary. General Gates's vanguard at length
began to show itself in the southern quarter ; and
Burgoyne, ardently desiring to be attacked, made
preparations for a defensive battle which, if success-
fully conducted on his part, would go far to redeem
the campaign. He posted his batteries, and drew up
his regiments in Hne of battle, along the low hills over-
looking Fishkill Creek. A broad space in front of his
guns was cleared of everything that could afford cover
to the American sharpshooters ; and the Schuyler
mansion on the other side of the stream, behind which
Gates might have assembled and formed his columns
of attack, was burned to the ground by Burgoyne's
orders.^ Our privates were overheard blessing Provi-
dence for the timely rain which would damp the prim-
ing of the fire-arms, and give an honest British grenadier
a chance of getting at the rebels with his bayonet.
Burgoyne was always enthusiastically followed, and
efficiently served. He had acquired the respect of
his soldiers by treating them respectfully, and had
secured the esteem of his officers by the scrupulous
regard for justice which he exhibited in all his pro-
fessional relations, and by his unaffected and easy
friendliness when off duty. From the first hour of
the expedition, up to the very latest, his commands
were eagerly and punctually obeyed ; and seldom has
a general, and never perha|)s a luckless general, been
^ During the previous night a range of barracks and storehouses,
forming part of General Schuyler's establishment, had perished in a fire
which was beyond question accidental. The buildings were full of British
soldiers, many of them sick and wounded, who were rescued from the
flames with the utmost difficulty. Sergeant Lamb, the historian, for one^
barely escaped alive.
1 88 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
more heartily beloved by his comrades and subordinates.
Fortune, during a short five minutes, seemed to
repent of the cruelty with which she had hitherto
pursued the gallant Englishman. On the morning of
the eleventh October, General Gates made a forward
movement in the direction of Burgoyne's position. A
thick mist shrouded the tiny valley which lay between
the two armies ; and twelve or fifteen hundred of the
best New England regulars had advanced beyond the
stream, and were already mounting the opposite slope,
when the fog suddenly lifted, and they found them-
selves separated by only two hundred yards of open
pasture from the muzzles of Burgoyne's cannon, and
the serried ranks of his musketeers. The grapeshot
commenced to fly, and the British infantry made ready
for a charge ; but the Americans, officers and men
alike, took in the situation at a glance, and re-passed
the glen with small loss, and in most admired disorder.
A business-like people, they had a firm hold upon the
great military truth that the first object of a retreat is
to get safe away ; and in that respect the incident
might have served as a lesson to poor Burgoyne.
Nothing disconcerted by the repulse of their centre,
the Republicans pressed forward, on left and right, in
overpowering numbers and with definite purpose. The
various manoeuvres upon which their hopes of a whole-
sale and conclusive victory depended were executed
skilfully and promptly, and with as great an exertion
of valour as on each occasion was necessary for the
attainment of the end in view. General Fellows, with
at least three thousand men, posted himself soHdly
beyond the Hudson River ; lined the shore with cannon;
constructed an intrenchment which effectually blocked
the egress from Burgoyne's bridge ; and beset the fords
and ferries along the great river as far north as Fort
Edward. General Gates arranged his guns, and drew
up his main army, on the southern bank of Fishkill
Creek ; while Colonel Morgan forded that rivulet a
mile or two higher up, wheeled to the eastward, and
SARATOGA l8g
stationed the whole of his command, with well-judged
audacity, just in front of the forest which bordered the
flank of Burgoyne's camp.
That camp was a mile and a half long, and in very
few places more than half a mile across. Hardly a
single spot within it lay beyond point-blank range of an
American cannon. The round-shot hurtled through
the air from morning till evening, and the surest marks-
men in Colonel Morgan's own regiment spent the whole
of the daylight mounted aloft in trees which commanded
the interior of the principal British redoubt. The only
trustworthy cover inside the fortification was afforded
by the angle which directly faced the adversary ; and
there the whole garrison clustered, " harassed and fa-
tigued with continually sitting and lying on the ground,
all huddled in a small compass." ^ The horses were
herded, out of the reach of cannon-balls, in rugged
and barren ravines where they had no provender
but dry leaves ; " and, so sure as a poor horse was
allured by the temptation of some refreshing grass,
which grew in the meadows in great abundance, it
met with instant death by a rifle-shot." Many of the
provision-boats had been captured, and others were
sunk by General Fellows's artillery ; so that it became
necessary to land their cargoes, and transport the
barrels and sacks into the redoubts on the shoulders of
the men, with vast labour, and some loss of life from
the enemy's musketry. The soldiers, debarred from
cutting wood and lighting fires, lived upon raw food
which would not have been very dainty or nutritive
even if they had possessed the means of cooking it.
1 Lieutenant Anburey's letter of the 17th November, 1777, gives an
account of what passed inside the Britisli camp during that last week
of the campaign. "The soldiers," he wrote, "would hoist a cap upon
a stick over the works ; when instantly there would be one or two shots
fired at it, and as many holes through it. I have seen a cap that has
been perforated by three balls." Our men were forbidden to reply, for
fear of thrtjwing away their ammunition at a moment when the enemy
might V)e meditating an assault in force. Anburey's narrative is con-
firmed by the frank and unvarnished evidence given by Lord Balcarres in
May 1779.
190 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Luxuries there were none ; and comforts were scarce,
and exorbitantly dear. New England rum was sold, to
those who could pay for it, at a guinea the half-pint ;
and the generals sate on mattresses spread out in a circle
upon the soaked and inhospitable soil. Shelterless, and
in sodden rags, our people starved and suffered ; while
the pitiless rain descended upon them in streams, as it
had continued to descend ever since the retreat began.
The whole encampment was so closely surrounded,
and so completely exposed, that there was no sanctuary
available even for the weakest and the most unwarlike.
Four officers had brought their wives with them on the
expedition. Two of the husbands, shot down in battle,
were lying between life and death ; and a third had been
killed outright. It was no place for women. During
the past three weeks, while the army lay in front of
Bemis's Heights, these ladies had endured much dis-
comfort and distress in a house where the entrance-hall
and parlours were strewn with poor fellows enfeebled
by dysentery ; while in the bed-rooms officers were dying,
or praying that they might die, of frightful wounds.
The dwelHng, which had now been allotted to them as
a refuge on the beleaguered peninsula above Saratoga,
was a still more crowded hospital, and a shambles too ;
for a well-directed cannonade carried death and mutila-
tion through all the upper chambers where the surgeons
were at work. A great number of women and children,
with invalided and maimed soldiers, — and a few, but
only a few, uninjured poltroons, — sate packed in fetid
squalor behind the cellar-doors. They could plainly
hear the cannon-balls rolling along the floor above their
heads. It was believed that the gunners across the
Hudson had mistaken this building for General Bur-
goyne's headquarters ; ^ and a proof was soon given that
Americans, where women are concerned, never con-
sciously transgress the laws of chivalry. The sole supply
of water for the Royal army was one muddy spring, and
what more could be got out of the holes which the cattle
1 Madame Riedesel'syisw^wa/.
SARATOGA IQI
had trodden with their feet ; so that our privates were
reduced to catch the rain in their hats, in order to make
their flour into a paste which it was just possible to
swallow.^ Thirst, very trying to everyone, was torture
for the wounded, and for the Httle children, in the pesti-
lent atmosphere of their subterranean abode. No man
could approach the river-side by day, and live ; but a
soldier's wife volunteered her services, and went to and
fro with her buckets between the house and the watering-
place, while the rifles and muskets on the opposite shore
were all respectfully silent.
Discipline, among the British rank and file, was main-
tained unimpaired ; but their spirit gradually became
quenched, and their keenness blunted. *' The utmost,"
(wrote Burgoyne,) ** that the officers gave me to hope from
the complexion of their men was that they would fight
if attacked. The Germans fell short of that. It was no-
torious that they meant to have given one fire, and then
have clubbed their arms."^ The besieged troops could
neither force their way out, nor slip through to Canada in
small parties. Some of the Indian warriors made a run
for freedom ; but, with all their secrecy and agility, and
their consummate knowledge of the woods, they failed to
penetrate the American lines, and returned disconsolate
to camp. Not a word arrived from Sir WiUiam Howe ;
not a word from Sir Henry Clinton : and the Quarter-
master-General reported that only three days' provisions,
upon short allowance, remained in store. On the after-
noon of the thirteenth October Burgoyne assembled a
Council, which included all field-officers, and the captains
in command of regiments. He had reason to believe,
(he said,) that some, perhaps all, who were informed as
to the real state of affairs were of a mind to capitulate ;
but he should hold himself inexcusable if he were to
^ These circumstances are taken from Lieutenant Anburey 's forty-
second letter. For a long while past, (he says,) the British troops "had
not a morsel of bread, but mixed up their fl(Hir into cakes, and baked
them upon a stone before the (Ire."
'■^Burgoyne to Sir William Ilowe ; October 20, 1777. American
Manuscripts in the Royal Institution of Great Britain : Volume I.
192 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
take a step " of so great consequence to national and
personal honour without such a concurrence of senti-
ments as should make a treaty an act of the whole
army as well as of the General." At the same time he
assured them, in manly phrases, that he, and he alone,
was responsible for the predicament in which the army
was now placed ; inasmuch as he had never asked any-
one for advice, but had always required, and obtained,
obedience to his orders. The Council was unanimously
of opinion that it would be good policy " to save to the
King his troops by a thoroughly honourable capitulation;"
and negotiations were opened, on the ensuing morning,
between the English and the American commanders.
Gates would accept nothing short of unconditional sur-
render; and certain arbitrary and unusual demands,
upon which he strongly insisted, were regarded as alto-
gether intolerable to the self-respect of military men.
The British General, speaking for himself and all his
officers, replied that, rather than submit to any such
terms, they would rush sword in hand on the enemy,
and would take no quarter. In the course of his life
John Burgoyne had often employed exaggerated and
over-coloured language ; but on this occasion he meant
exactly what he said, and he said it to much purpose.
Gates gave himself another night to think the subject
over, and then agreed that the Royal troops should march
out of their camp with all the honours of war, and that
the whole army should be granted a free passage to
Great Britain from the port of Boston, upon condition
of not serving again in North America during the then
existing contest. That, as history will always take
very good care to remember, was the governing clause
in the Convention of Saratoga.
During the whole time that messages were passing
from camp to camp, either an informal, or a declared,
cessation of hostilities established itself between the two
armies. The bombardment subsided ; the more deadly
whistle of bullets was no longer heard ; the strain on
the besieged garrison came to a sudden end; and the
SARA TOGA 1 93
Americans, for their part, stacked their muskets, and
extinguished their linstocks, with a sentiment of genuine
satisfaction and relief. Our privates thronged the bank
of Fishkill Creek to get their fill of the cool running
water ; and they were soon on amicable terms with ad-
versaries who spoke their own language, who were very
generous with the contents of their provision-wallets,
and against whom, as man to man, they had no rational
ground of quarrel. On the sixteenth of October, after
many qualms, and some renewed consultation with his
military advisers, Burgoyne signed the treaty. A great
quantity of fresh meat at once arrived from across the
stream for distribution among his famished battalions;
and the remaining hours of daylight were consumed
in preparing for the ceremony of the morrow. Before
the negotiations were finally concluded, the last penny
due to every Royal soldier had been paid out to him from
the military chest. ^ The Germans burned the poles of
their regimental flags ; and the colours themselves were
sewn into the lining of a mattress against the day when
they could be brought forth from their hiding-place, and
unfurled once more in the Duke of Brunswick's presence.
The English, whose standards had not been hired out
for gold, and who had carried them erect and safe
through three fiercely contested battles, did not conceive
that any such precaution was demanded by their own,
or their Sovereign's, honour.
The conduct of our people, during these trying
scenes, was manly and dignified, and exempt from any
admixture of bravado. They marched from their
camps to a meadow near the junction of the two rivers,
and there deposited their arms, and emptied out their
cartridges. Some of the men cried bitterly when part-
ing with their weapon ; but none except friends were
there to see. Gates, with a delicacy which the British
^ It is pleasant to know that the poor woman, who went to the Hudson
for water, got her share of the m(jney that was j^oing. " Everyone,"
said Madame Riedesel, "threw a wliole handful into her lap, and she
received altogether over twenty guineas."
VOL. IV. O
194 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
generals warmly acknowledged, confined all the sepa-
rate portions of his army in their respective quarters,
under the strictest countersign ; and only one single
member of his Staff was in attendance for the purpose
of taking over the surrendered property in the name,
and for the use, of the American people. It was a rich
prize, consisting almost exclusively of articles which the
captors specially needed. There were five thousand
muskets, seventy thousand rounds of ball-cartridge,
many ammunition-waggons, four hundred sets of harness,
and a fine train of brass artillery, — battering guns, field
guns, howitzers, and mortars; — forty-two pieces of ord-
nance in all. The prisoners numbered five thousand
eight hundred, of whom half were Germans.^ The rest
were almost entirely British regulars ; for only a very
small minority of the Provincial levies had stood it out
loyally and faithfully to the last. Major Skene, a gal-
lant enthusiast for whom the shipwreck of the cause
which he served meant personal ruin, wrote himself down
in the list of prisoners as " a poor follower of the British
army." That army contained several veterans of high
and deserved renown ; and in all the regiments, and not
only on the Staff, there were many youths of good birth,
and bright military promise. The Americans claimed
to have taken six members of Parliament, at a time
when Parliament was almost identical with fashionable
society. Burgoyne's officers were the flower of our
fighting aristocracy ; and they, with their handful of
soldiers, — abandoned by incompetent Ministers to an all
but inevitable catastrophe, — nevertheless sustained the
national reputation for valour and discipline at the point
to which it had been raised by the column of Fontenoy.
Gates entertained the chief officers of the Royal army
at a banquet of antique simplicity.^ Burgoyne, on
^ Reckoning in the wounded, the Americans, previously to the capitu-
lation, had already captured above eighteen hundred prisoners.
2 The table consisted of bare planks, laid across empty barrels ; and
the Republican camp could produce only four plates, and two drinking-
glasses for the use of Gates and Burgoyne. There was plenty of plain
roast and boiled, but no liquor except rum and water.
SARATOGA 1 95
being asked for a toast, gave *' General Washington ; "
and his host responded by drinking to the King.
When dinner was over, the British began their journey
southward, passing between two parallel ranks of
American infantry, nearly fourteen thousand by count,
with four thousand more in the background. The
Republicans were said to have spent the whole morning
*' scrubbing and cleaning their persons and firelocks, in
order to make the best appearance possible." ^ Some
of the more reflective among our Englishmen and
Germans were deeply impressed by the unwonted
spectacle, and drew ominous conclusions with regard
to the ultimate issue of the war. ''The men," said an
officer of the Brunswick contingent, '' stood so still that
we were filled with astonishment. Not a man made
a motion to speak with his neighbour. Moreover, kindly
Nature had made them so slender, so handsome, and
so sinewy that we wondered at the sight of so well-made
a people." They owed little to the splendour of their
outfit. The regulars of the Continental line were appro-
priately dressed, and carried stout knapsacks, and good
French muskets ; but the miHtia were in costumes
which, whatever else might be said of them, certainly
could not be called uniforms. The coats, indeed, of the
officers were designed with a military intention, but
they were cut according to the wearer's own fancy,
and from the first material that came to hand ; while
on the flank of every battalion, with their unwieldy
gun-barrels towering over their heads like a row of
pikes, stood several score of respectable rural free-
holders clothed as if for the hay-field, or, (at the very
smartest,) for the church and the cattle-fair.^ The
^ Letter from an officer in the London newspapers of January, 1778.
2 The Germans noticed the size, and strange colours, of the wigs worn
by the older among these armed citizens, and particularly by such of
them as were Committee-men in their respective townships. Some of
them, (we are told,) looked as if they had a whole fleece on their shoulders.
In Mr. Edward J. Lowell's Hessians there are frequent extracts from a
T/erman periodical which supported the views of the British Govern-
ment, and was published at Gottingen, within George the Third's Electoral
dominions. ^
o2
196 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Brunswick officer observed " many men fifty or sixty
years old, who very evidently had now been brought
for the first time into the ranks, but who had their
hearts in the business, and were not to be made light of,
especially in the woods. In serious earnest," (so this
gentleman went on to say,) '*it is a nation with much
natural talent for war." The farmers of Massachusetts
and Connecticut might have a talent for war ; but they
had no love of it. As soon as the fighting was done
they returned to their families, conscious of having
played the man, and thanking the Divine Providence
which had given them the victory. They had more
cause to be grateful than they yet knew ; for from that
day forward no hostile force, which could be dignified
by the name of an invading army, ever again threat-
ened the New England homes.
When the procession arrived opposite the American
headquarters the two Commanders issued from a tent,
and placed themselves in full view of both armies.
Then Burgoyne delivered over his sword to Gates, who
received it with a courteous inclination of the head,
and instantly returned it to the owner. The sword is
still preserved by the family. It is a soldier's weapon,
with a blade forged for use and not for show, and a
very solid handle of ivory which fits and fills the grasp.
It was for many years in the possession of Field
Marshal Sir John Fox Burgoyne, of Badajos, Ciudad
Rodrigo, and San Sebastian, — a good soldier who was
more fortunate than his ill-starred father in that his most
important services were performed under the direction
of a greater soldier than himself.
The American general, throughout these transactions,
behaved like a man of feeling and honour. He had
done everything in his power to mitigate the lot of
those sufferers whom the British, on their retreat from
the position in front of Bemis's Heights, had left behind
them in hospital ; ^ and when Lady Harriet Acland,
1 It was reported to Gates that these defenceless people were in the
greatest alarm of the scalp-hunters. He at once sent off a few light
SARATOGA 1 97
after some very hazardous adventures, penetrated the
Republican outposts in search of her wounded husband,
she was received by Gates with the sympathy and
respect due to her sex and her unhappy fortune. There
was another American officer whose behaviour on this
occasion was marked by true magnanimity. Phihp
Schuyler, with no signs of his military rank about him,
was present at the capitulation ; and Burgoyne seized
the opportunity to express regret that the exigencies
of war had necessitated the burning of his fine
country-house, and the wrecking of his valuable prop-
erty. Schuyler in return begged him to put the
matter, then and always, out of his thoughts, and
promised to send an aide-de-camp with him to Albany
who would perhaps procure him better quarters than a
stranger might be able to find for himself. " This
gentleman," said Burgoyne, " conducted me to a very
elegant house and, to my great surprise, introduced me
to Mrs. Schuyler and her family ; and in this house
I remained during my whole stay in Albany, with a
table of twenty covers for me and my friends, and every
demonstration of hospitality." That hospitality was
extended to others besides Burgoyne. When Madame
Riedesel, shy and anxious, found herself in the midst
of the American camp, she was encountered by '* a noble-
looking man " in civilian dress, who lifted her children
from the waggon, led the family into a tent where a
wholesome meal awaited them, and told them that his
house would be their home as long as they remained
at Albany. The poor lady had one very bad moment
during her sojourn beneath General Schuyler's roof; for
horsemen at a gallop in order to reassure them ; and he directed that the
guard at the hospital should be mounted by Morgan's riflemen from the
frontier, whom the Indians feared worse than the devil.
A London newspaper related that the American soldiers, who had
plenty of food, and no means of cooking it, wished to confiscate the
British camp-kettles ; " but General Gates decided the matter by ordering
the kettles to remain with the English, as they would be very necessary
for them at Boston." Three days after the surrender Burgoyne informed
Sir William Howe that the treatment of the officers and troops in general
had been " of an extraordinary nature in point of generosity."
198 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
the eldest of her little girls, fascinated by the grandeur
and the tastefulness of everything which she saw
around her, cried, in the hearing of all the company :
" Mother ! Mother ! Is this the palace Father was to
have when he came to America ? "
The districts through which the Royal army per-
formed its long and dreary tramp to the sea-coast
were inhabited by a very decent and worthy, and not
unkindly people. They were exceedingly poor, with
the temporary poverty of men who had stripped them-
selves, first of superfluities, and afterwards of comforts,
for the furtherance of a public cause. Nothing
surprised the English prisoners so much as the cheerful
unanimity with which all classes, in town and country
alike, submitted to every sort of sacrifice in order " to
obtain that idol Independency."^ The gentry, indeed,
who conversed quite freely with Burgoyne's officers,
confessed that before the outbreak of hostilities they
had not harboured the most distant thought of separa-
tion from the mother-country ; but they now concurred
with the mass of their fellow-citizens in a settled and
violent hatred of the British Parliament and the British
Crown. They did not, however, show any inclination to
visit the sins of George the Third upon his hapless and
helpless servants. Whatever disagreeable experiences
might be in store for the captive army in the Middle
and Southern States of the Confederacy, the inhabitants
of New England, along the whole of two hundred miles
of road, were very seldom deficient in humanity, or,
(after their own fashion,) in courtesy. But, all the same,
in respect to their leading characteristics they were
New Englanders still. The Deacons and the Select-
men were terribly scandalised whenever the British
troops pursued their journey during service time on a
Sunday ; and, at any hour of every week-day, there
were plenty of small local capitalists ready to buy
1 Lieutenant Anburey relates, in his forty-sixth Letter, that the owners
of some very humble cottages had parted with one out of their two
blankets for the use of their army in the field.
SARATOGA 1 99
guineas from a hungry Ensign, or a thirsty Grenadier,
for the least number of paper dollars which, in his
ignorance as to the current rate of exchange, he could
be induced to accept. Our younger officers upbraided
themselves with improvidence when they recalled to
mind the vast quantities of Continental notes which they
found among the spoils captured at Ticonderoga, and
which, in the lightness of their hearts, they had burned,
or otherwise disposed of, with every circumstance of
contumely.^
Burgoyne and his companions soon learned, if they
did not know it already, that a prevailing national
quality among Americans of that generation was their
immense and insatiable curiosity. All through the States
no traveller was ever left in peace until he had satisfied
his entertainers about his extraction and antecedents, his
trade or profession, and the business which had brought
him into their neighbourhood ; and such unusual and
remarkable travellers as now were passing through
their confines New Hampshire and Massachusetts had
never seen before. The country people dropped in
from many miles round to line the causeways while
the Royal infantry filed past. The girls were much in
evidence, dressed in perfectly fitting clothes of bright
colours, and looking exceedingly pretty in the eyes of
poor lads who had been roughing it during three hard
campaigns. " They stood," said an officer, " by dozens
along our road, passing us in review, laughing mock-
ingly at us, and from time to time dropping us a
mischievous curtsey or handing us an apple." Such
crowds of visitors pressed into the houses where the
prisoners were quartered that their landlords were in
some cases suspected of having taken money for the
show. An unfortunate Lieutenant who had succeeded
to a Scotch peerage, when he reached his destination
^ At Stillwater, the first stage of their route, the British could only
get nine dollars for each piece of gold. After crossing the Green Moun-
tains they had learned to insist on at least eighteen or twenty dollars ;
anl the storekeepers in the villages even then made a handsome profit by
the transaction.
200 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
of an evening wet to the skin and splashed with mire,
was expected to hold a levee for the purpose of enabHng
all the village gossips to see what a Lord was like.^
Burgoyne himself had to face an ordeal which, to a
man of his temperament, was more formidable than the
musket-balls at Freeman's Farm. On the day when he
was invited by General Heath to a ceremonial dinner
in Boston the windows and roofs were crowded with
gazers, and the street was so densely packed that the
Royal officers with difficulty forced their way along.
Burgoyne could not help hearing one or two pungent
remarks, which evidently had been saved up for that
occasion, and which he took like a man of wit and
breeding; 2 but there was no vulgar or overt disrespect
either of voice or gesture. *' Sir," (he afterwards ob-
served to General Heath,) ** I have been astonished at
the civility of your people."
The first sight of the German auxiliaries aroused an
intense interest in all the townships which lay between
the Hudson and the Mystic rivers. New England
children had hitherto fancied them to be as strong and
ferocious as ogres ; ^ and New England men could not
forget that every Chasseur and Fusilier had confidently
^ At one of these gatherings a jocular English subaltern rose from his
seat, and, pointing to the youth, who on that afternoon was in a worse
pickle than usual, informed the company, " in a voice and manner as if he
was Herald at Arms," that this was the Right Honourable Francis
Napier, of His Majesty's Thirty First Regiment of Foot, Baron of
Merchiston in the Kingdom of Scotland, Baronet of Nova Scotia, — and a
good deal else which was less authentic. The women present looked
very attentively at his Lordship, and one of them threw up her hands and
exclaimed : " Well ! if that be a Lord, I never desire to see any other
Lord than the Lord Jehovah."
'^ Trevelyan's American Revolution ; volume I., pages 299 and 332.
^ The generation which was still in the nursery during the first years
of the Revolutionary war had strange traditions about the bulk and
height, the physical conformation, and the prodigious appetite, of George
the Third's foreign mercenaries. Among relics which in after days were
ploughed up in the battle-fields near Bemis's Heights were some human
teeth of abnormal shape. They were supposed to have belonged to
Hessians ; for it was popularly believed that many of them had double
teeth all round both jaws.
SARATOGA 201
looked forward to supplanting some rich American
Whig in the enjoyment of his farmstead and his orchard.
To judge from the talk of Hessians and Anspachers
on board ship, and in their Canadian barracks, the
suppression of the rebellion was to be followed by a
transference of real estate on a scale surpassing any-
thing which had taken place since the Israelites settled
themselves down on the soil of Canaan. And now at
last these dreaded strangers had entered their Promised
Land, but not to possess it. Their miserable aspect
excited the contempt, and awakened the compassion,
of the people whom they had so deeply and wantonly
injured. A curious account of them was given by a
lady who witnessed their arrival at Cambridge ; — in
which town, contiguous to the Port of Boston, our
army, by a Resolution of the Massachusetts Congress,
was for the present appointed to be lodged. ** I never,"
she wrote, ** had the least idea that the creation
produced such a sordid set of creatures in human
figure ; — poor, dirty, emaciated men ; and great numbers
of women, who seemed to be beasts of burden, having
bushel baskets on their backs, by which they were
bent double. The contents seemed to be pots and
kettles, various sorts of furniture, and children peeping
through gridirons and other utensils." They brought
with them some very young infants who had been born
on the road ; and the women were barefooted, and
clothed in dirty rags. Madame Riedesel accompanied
the line of march in a roomy, but not very sightly,
vehicle. " My calash," she said, " resembled one of the
vans in which they carry round wild animals for exliibi-
tion ; and I was frequently obHged to halt, because the
people insisted upon seeing the wife of the German
general and her children. ... I must say that they
were very friendly, and particularly deHghted at my
being able to speak to them in English." Once and
again, indeed, seme rustic host or hostess could not re-
frain from asking her why her husband came to America
in order to kill folks who had never harmed him. Such
202 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
an inquiry was regarded as quite permissible by the
more plain-spoken members of a severely logical people,
whose descendants, to this hour, have been unable to
imagine any tenable justification for the interference
of armed foreigners in a family quarrel between Great
Britain and her Colonies.
The chivalry displayed by two at least of the
Republican generals was in marked contrast with
the conduct of the politicians. Tidings of a great
national triumph circulated rapidly upon the wings of
rumour ; and Americans were already familiar with
the emotions of victory before they learned that the
fruit of their success was less complete and abun-
dant than they had a right to anticipate. A full fort-
night after the Convention was signed, the confidential
aide-de-camp of General Gates arrived at the seat of
government with an official account of all that had
taken place at Saratoga ; and three more days passed
before he had put his documents in order, and sub-
mitted them to the inspection of Congress. An im-
patient delegate, to the amusement and delight of his
colleagues, had already made a motion to compliment
Colonel Wilkmson with a pair of spurs ; and, when the
papers were distributed to the Members, it became
evident enough why Gates and his Staff had been in no
special hurry to let their contents be known. That
part of the despatch which related to the military op-
erations showed, beyond all question whatever, that the
American general had had the British army absolutely
at his mercy ; while the text of the Convention proved
him to have been incapable of profiting, as a nego-
tiator, by the magnificent opportunity which the for-
tune of war had placed in his grasp. Instead of being
in permanent custody as prisoners, Burgoyne's troops,
within ten or twelve weeks at the latest, would find
themselves once again in Europe at the disposal of the
British War Office. All his regiments might, and would,
THE VIOLATED CONVENTION 203
be employed to garrison Mediterranean fortresses, or
arsenals and dockyard towns on the Southern coast of
England ; and an equal number of home battalions
would thereby be released for active service in Amer-
ica. Burgoyne, admirably supported by the martial tem-
per and sterling patriotism of all his principal officers,
had imposed his own terms, instead of accepting those
dictated by his adversary. A few months afterwards,
from his place in the House of Commons, — venturing
upon one of those old-world literary allusions the dis-
appearance of which has not been altogether to the ad-
vantage of Parliamentary debates, — he asserted that his
own misfortune would never be classed in history with
the Roman disaster of the Caudine Forks, because, under
the Treaty of Saratoga, a British army had been saved
to the State. As far as his own action could influence
the event, that claim was true to the letter. Policy, (to
quote the words of Byron in a precisely similar case,)
regained what arms had lost;^ and Burgoyne, by his
perspicacity and firmness in the hour of defeat, had
made an excellent bargain for his country.
To come off second-best in a bargain has never been
to the taste of Americans ; but on this occasion their
national word had been sacredly pledged, and their Gov-
ernment was under an obligation to abide by it. The
majority of Congressmen, however, were deaf to the com-
mands of honour ; and they soon had made up their
minds to do the wrong thing. There were two ways of
doing it ; and they chose the worse. They might have
boldly proclaimed that no servant of the State had power
to bind the State by an engagement prejudicial to the pub-
lic interest ; and then they might have repudiated the
Convention, and made a scapegoat of Horatio Gates. So
they would have acted if they had had the courage of their
unscrupulousness ; but Gates was their spoiled child,
and their chosen instrument for persecuting and displacing
better soldiers than himself. Intent upon throwing over
1 Childe Ilarold^s Pilgrimage ; Canto I., stanza 25.
204 ^-^^ AMERICAN REVOLUTION
the Treaty without sacrificing the reputation of the gen-
eral who made it, they deUberately confused the issue
by raising a series of petty and vexatious quibbles. They
made a grievance of the circumstance that the British
privates, when the muskets were surrendered, did not at
the same time deliver up the cartridge-boxes and the
cross-belts ; and they complained that the American War
Office had not been furnished with a personal description
of all Burgoyne's non-commissioned officers and men,
similar to that which appears on the face of a European
passport.
Our own commanders on land and sea, acting in
perfect good faith, but blundering at every stage of
the wretched business, lent themselves unintentionally,
though most effectually, to the sinister designs of Con-
gress. Lord Howe and his brother were sadly wanting
in judgment and in energy. Their course was plain
before them. They should have chartered all the
merchantmen in New York Bay, supplemented by as
many royal frigates as the case required, and should
have despatched them to Boston by the first fair wind,
in order to carry our troops straight home to England
before the pettifoggers, who for the moment ruled the
counsels of America, had time to pick holes in the text
of the Convention. But Sir William Howe wasted
several months parleying with Congress for permis-
sion to effect the embarkation from a port in British
possession, instead of from Boston harbour. This pro-
posal, pertinaciously urged, and directly contrary to the
express terms of the agreement, roused even in just-
minded Americans a suspicion that, if once General
Howe got General Burgoyne's soldiers within the
British lines, he would incorporate them in his own
army, and would never allow them to embark at all.
The final and irreparable mistake was made by Bur-
goyne himself. Under the Seventh Clause, our officers
were all to be quartered " according to their rank."
General Heath, who commanded in Massachusetts,
exerted himself honestly and strenuously to procure
THE VIOLATED CONVENTION 205
them fitting accommodation ;i but the resources of the
community were limited, and some of our people were
at first uncomfortably lodged. Burgoyne remonstrated
in the too emphatic language which so often gushed
from his pen. He especially called the attention of
General Gates to the over-crowding of English offi-
cers, and declared roundly that *' the public faith was
broke." This most unfortunate expression provided the
party leaders in Congress with the excuse for which
they had long been searching. On the eighth of
January, 1778, it was solemnly voted that the phrase,
which the British general had used in his letter,
afforded a just ground for fear lest he should avail
himself of *' such pretended breach of the Convention "
in order to disengage himself and his army from the
obligations they were under to the United States ; and
it was accordingly resolved that *' the embarkation of
Lieutenant General Burgoyne, and the troops under his
command, be suspended till a distinct and explicit rati-
fication of the Convention of Saratoga shall be properly
notified by the Court of Great Britain to Congress."
Burgoyne, dismayed and repentant, protested against
the unfair construction which had been placed on his
hasty and ill-considered words.^ But Congress was
inexorable. When the fleet of transports from New
York at length appeared off the Massachusetts coast
they were not admitted within the forts which protected
1 During the first three weeks of November, Heath's published cor-
respondence turned almost entirely on the provision of quarters in the
town of Cambridge for Burgoyne's army. On the eleventh of the month
he wrote to the Council of Massachusetts : "The honor of the State is
in danger ; the publick faith responsible ; circumstances will no longer
admit of delay ; decisive measures must immediately be adopted ; and I
cann(;t conceive of any so effectual as the appropriation of at least one of
the Colleges." The building was taken over, and a fair rent paid to the
Harvard College authorities.
2 " General Burgoyne and his officers appear much disappointed, and
exhibit an appearance rather of concern and uneasiness than of sulkiness
or resentment, and endeavour to palliate their former expressions and
conduct." William Heath to Henry Laurens; Head Quarters, Boston ;
Feb. 7, 1778.
206 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
the entrance to Boston harbour. The British Ministers
hastened to announce themselves as willing to ratify
the Treaty, and repeatedly called upon the American
Government to fulfil its part of the covenant ; but the
Republican authorities took no notice whatever of the
reminders and expostulations which reached them from
Downing Street. The Convention Troops, (for such
was now the official designation of Burgoyne's army,)
were transplanted from Cambridge to a remote inland
town south of the Potomac, where the faciHties for deser-
tion were very great, and to many British soldiers
quite irresistible. More than one of the State Govern-
ments took measures to seduce our rank and file from
their allegiance, and attract them into the Revolu-
tionary army ; — an ignoble expedient against which
George Washington indignantly, and even passionately,
remonstrated.^ The American recruiting agents had
very little success with the Germans, who were per-
fectly happy in captivity, and who had no desire to
fight either for, or against. King George so long as they
could draw his money. They lived for the present in
a sort of financial Paradise. Without being harassed
by drill, or fatigued by marches, or exposed as a mark
for bullets, they were earning four times the regimental
pay that they would have received in their own Father-
land ; and those of them who practised handicrafts
were permitted to go round the neighbourhood, work-
ing for the exceptionally high wages which skilled la-
bour commanded in the United States. The leaders of
Congress, from first to last, persisted in behaving as if
the Saratoga Treaty was a spurious, or a non-existent,
1 " It gives me inexpressible concern," wrote Washington, " to have
repeated information, from the best authority, that the Committees of the
different towns and districts in your State hire deserters from General
Burgoyne's army, and employ them as substitutes, to excuse personal
service of the inhabitants. I need not enlarge upon the danger of sub-
stituting, as soldiers, men who have given glaring proof of a treacherous
disposition, and who are bound to us by no motives of attachment,
instead of citizens, in whom the ties of country, kindred, and sometimes
property, are so many securities for their fidelity." Washington to the
President of the Council of Massachusetts ; Valley Forge, March 17, 1778.
THE VIOLATED CONVENTION 207
document. They calmly proceeded to exchange Bur
goyne's officers, who were extremely impatient to get
back to England, against American prisoners of equiv-
alent rank ; but otherwise none of the Convention
Troops were restored to their native countries until the
war was over. So late as May 1780 more than fifteen
hundred of General Riedesel's Brunswickers still re-
mained under detention, or on parole, within the borders
of Virginia.
The Americans had another strong motive for ignor-
ing the promise which had been made in their name.
Before the end of i J J J it was all but certain that France
would soon be at war with England on their behalf ;
and, under the terms of the Saratoga Convention, Bur-
goyne's troops might legitimately be employed against
the French in the East and West Indies, or on the
coasts of Normandy and Brittany. It would be no
small relief to the Ministry at Versailles if General
Phillips's gunners, and the Light Infantry of Lord Bal-
carres, were retained under lock and key as long as the
war lasted ; and the statesmen of Congress could not
resist the temptation of doing a good turn, at the cost
of their consciences, to their very obhging and open-
handed ally. John Adams, who arrived in Paris early
in April 1778, carried specific instructions to be before-
hand with George the Third's agents in giving his own
version of what was at best an equivocal story. ^ Adams,
accordingly, seized the first opportunity of waiting upon
the Comte de Vergennes, who was Louis the Sixteenth's
Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and communicated to
him " the Resolutions of Congress respecting the sus-
pension of Burgoyne's embarkation," which the French-
man read through, and pronounced to he fort bonnes?
With that solitary tribute of approbation, proceeding
^ " I have it exceedingly at heart, from a persuasion of the rectitude
and justifiableness of the measures, to be in the van of the British
Ministry and their emissaries at every court of Europe." Henry Laupens,
the President of Congress, to John Adams ; Yorktown 22 January, 1778.
2 Adams's Diary for April 1 1, 1778.
208 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
from a quarter which was neither unprejudiced not
disinterested, Americans, then and thereafter, had to be
contented. Their true friends and sincere well-wishers,
in all countries and in every generation, would give
much if those unseemly pages could be expunged from
their history. The ablest among the contemporary
English chroniclers, and the most favourable to their
cause, recorded his profound regret that they had so
widely departed from the system of fairness, equity, and
good faith which had hitherto guided their actions, and
which was particularly essential to the reputation of a
new State ; ^ and his opinion has been shared by all
careful and responsible writers from his day to ours.
The young republic had adopted a line of conduct
which ranked it, in strange and uncongenial company,
below the moral level of civilised and self-respecting
nations. In June and July 1808 our own Parliament
and people loyally adhered to the Convention of
Cintra, which restored to the Emperor Napoleon, at
a critical moment of an internecine struggle, five and
twenty thousand splendid troops every man of whom,
in the estimation of the British public, might and should
have been kept as prisoners of war in British hands.
During the same months, in the same year, the semi-
barbarous Junta of Seville deliberately set at nought
the stipulations of the Convention of Baylen ; and in
1799 the despicable South Italian Bourbons, in their
thirst for vengeance, refused to observe the terms of
surrender which had been granted to the garrisons of
the Neapolitan citadels. The odious cruelty, which
accompanied and aggravated these infringements of
public faith, had no parallel in the treatment of Bur-
goyne and his army ; but none the less, when every
allowance has been made, and all excuses have been
impartially considered, the violation of the Saratoga
Treaty remains as a blot on the lustre of the American
Revolution.
* " History of Europe " in the Annual Register of 1 778 ; Chapter 10.
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE. BRANDYWINE AND PAOLI.
GERMANTOWN. THE CONTEST FOR THE DELAWARE
When Sir William Howe, towards the close of June
1777, retreated from in front of Washington's impreg-
nable position at Middlebrook, and ferried his troops
back to Staten Island, the exultation in America rivalled,
and even outstripped, the dissatisfaction which the news
aroused in England. A powerful foe had for the third
time been expelled from the main land ; New Jersey
was again clear of invaders ; and most of the Con-
tinental generals who had taken part in that short and
prosperous campaign were inspired by a comfortable
belief that their arms were irresistible. Some very
strong heads were fairly turned. Nathanael Greene,
indeed, had taken to heart, once and for ever, the lesson
which he learned when Fort Washington fell ; ^ but an-
other admirable soldier abandoned himself to a fit of over-
confidence which in his case was terribly premature.
Anthony Wayne had always been eager to serve
under the eye of the Commander-in-Chief ; and his
wish was at last gratified. He now commanded one
of Washington's divisions with the rank of brigadier ;
a position from which he was not promoted until long
after the time when, by a series of rude combats and
memorable exploits, he had won his place among the
foremost champions in the struggle for American Inde-
pendence. He never complained of being ill-treated by
Congress. There was no room in his mind for dis-
1 " I feel mad, vexerl, sick, and sorry." Thus Greene wrote to Knox
on the day after that grievous disaster. lie never again discounted suc-
cess beforehand.
VOL. rv. 209 p
2IO THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
appointed ambition or wounded vanity ; for his soul
was aglow with the fire of patriotism and the ardour
of self-sacrifice, and he was intensely happy in the
pursuit of a calling which was the absorbing passion of
his life.^ In early youth he had been desirous to enter
the Royal Army. But a commission in a marching
regiment, to his father's judgment, seemed a very poor
livelihood for a colonist with no family or political
claims on the favour of the British War Office ; and
so Anthony Wayne imitated the example of George
Washington, and became a land-surveyor. His work
lay far out to the West, in front of the advancing zone
of civilisation ; and the hardships and adventures of
the wilderness, together with the accurate and com-
prehensive observation of natural objects which his
business demanded, trained him for the work of a
general at least as effectually as if he had been kicking
his heels in an English or an Irish garrison town.
Wayne was thirty years old when the fighting began ;
and he at once threw up a profession in which he was
making money fast, raised a battalion of infantry, and
was appointed its colonel. He tried to teach himself
the art of war out of very old books ; and he had a
strong, and vehemently expressed, predilection for the
old methods. Anthony Wayne loved to see troops smart
and tidy even under the most adverse circumstances.^
He frankly acknowledged that he had '* an insuperable
^ Major General Anthony Wayne, and the Pennsylvanian Line in the
Continental Army ; by Charles J. Stille, President of the Historical
Society in Pennsylvania : Chapter i. Wayne's schoolmaster, who was
likewise his uncle, wrote thus to his father : " What he may be best
qualified for I know not. He may perhaps make a soldier. He has
already distracted the brains of the boys under my charge by rehearsals
of battles and sieges. During noon, in place of the usual games and
amusements, he has the boys employed in throwing up redoubts."
2 In July 1776 Wayne appointed a barber to each company in his
regiment for the purpose of shaving the privates, and dressing their hair ;
and that order was issued when his soldiers had /ust returned, starved
and almost naked, from a frightful campaign in Canada, having lost, (as
has been truly said,) " almost everything belonging to them except their
hair and their beards."
THE MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE 211
bias '* in favour of an elegant uniform and a martial
bearing, and that he would prefer to take his men under
fire neatly clothed and well set up, with bayonets fixed
and a single charge of ammunition, rather than lead
them into action shabby and dirty, with rifles and full
powder horns. His implicit belief in the bayonet was
soon to receive an uq welcome, and indeed a tragical,
confirmation.
Wayne had recently been engaged in an aggressive
operation on a small scale, which was vigorously, con-
ducted, and had resulted in success. He was now in
tearing spirits ; and he joyfully prognosticated, in letters
to his friends, that it would be a long while before
seven hundred English infantry would again venture
to face five hundred of his own Pennsylvanians.
Washington was not responsible for the contents of
all the post-bags which left his camp ; and, when
the Royal army retired from New Jersey, he was
very far from sharing the triumphant exhilaration with
which some among his principal lieutenants viewed the
backs of their departing adversaries. The July and
August of 1777 were among the most anxious months
in George Washington's perplexed and hazardous exist-
ence. He had learned from his spies that the British
transports were being fitted with horse-boxes, and stored
with water, forage, and provisions for a month's voyage ;
and the purport of that voyage was still enveloped in
a fog of mystery which, up to this time, had very seldom
enshrouded Sir William Howe's strategical secrets. The
expedition might be destined for an attack upon Charles-
ton, or Boston, or (still more probably) upon Phila-
delphia ; but Washington, who, in a case of doubt,
always credited his opponent with the most sane and
rational intentions, could not divest himself of a sus-
picion that the British general was getting ready to sail
up the Hudson River in the direction of Albany. The
American army was accordingly moved north towards
Peekskill and the New York Highlands, in order to
prevent the junction of Howe and Burgoyne, and so
p2
212 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
rescue Schuyler from what otherwise would be inevi-
table destruction. The situation, (to use Washington's
own words,) was truly delicate and embarrassing. In
half a score of letters he described the uncertainties
which beset him as distressing beyond measure, and
intricate out of all comprehension ; and, though he
spared his troops as much as possible, he admitted
with regret that they were harassed by marching and
countermarching to an extent which was almost unen-
durable.^
By the end of the third week in July all but forty
ships, of an immense British fleet, had dropped down
from New York City, and were lying in the Narrows at
the entrance of the Bay. Three days afterwards they
put out to sea ; and on the last of the month Washington
was informed that more than two hundred sail had
appeared in the estuary of the Delaware with the
obvious intention of going up the river, and assaulting
Philadelphia. He himself, in advance of his army, was
already well on his way towards that city when he was
encountered by the astounding intelligence that the
British vessels were no longer between the Capes of the
Delaware. After a stay of four and twenty hours they
had turned their bowsprits eastwards, and, with a fair
wind behind them, had once more vanished into the
illimitable. This surprising event, (as Washington
called it,) completed the mystification of that much
vexed general ; and he determined to stay his hand
until some clearer light was thrown upon the insoluble
problem of Sir William Howe's plan of action. " The
fatigue and injury," (so he told his brother,) " which
men must sustain by long marches in such extreme
^ Washington to the President of Congress, Camp at Middlebrook,
July 2, 1777; to Major General Armstrong, Morristown, 4 July; to
Governor Cooke, July 7 ; to the President of Congress, July 10 ; to Major
General Schuyler, Eleven Miles within the Clove, July 22 ; to Governor
Trumbull, Philadelphia, August 4 ; and a letter to John Augustine
Washington, which reviews the events of the preceding five weeks,
written on the fifteenth of August.
THE MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE 213
heat as we have felt for the last five days must keep us
quiet till we hear something of the destination of the
enemy." Washington quartered his troops in some
pleasant meadows which bordered the cool and limpid
stream of the Neshaminy, just twenty miles to the
North of Philadelphia ; and there he possessed his soul
in such patience as he was able to command. The
omens were harder to interpret than ever ; but, upon
the whole, he inclined to the belief that Sir William
Howe's cruise to the mouth of the Delaware was a feint
made for the purpose of drawing the American army
away from Albany, and that he now had doubled
back to the assistance of Burgoyne.^ This, at best,
would have been a complicated, and a very precarious,
stratagem ; but it was infinitely less eccentric than the
movement which the British Commander-in-Chief had
in reality adopted.^
After the interval of a fortnight the royal fleet re-
appeared — not outside Boston Harbour ; not at Sandy
Hook ; not once again in the Delaware River ; but at the
entrance to Chesapeake Bay, ninety leagues down the
coast from New York. Ten more days were consumed
in slowly and painfully ascending the interminable gulf ;
and at last, on the twenty-fifth of August, the Royal
army was put ashore at the Head of Elk in the State
of Maryland, at a point ten miles more distant from Phila-
delphia than it had reached in the previous December ;
only ten miles nearer that city than the spot from which
it had retreated in June ; and exactly thirteen miles
across country from the port of Newcastle on the Dela-
ware River, where Sir William Howe might, with perfect
^Washington to Major General Putnam, August i, 1777; to John
Augustine Washington, August 5 ; to Putnam again, August 5.
^ This total disappearance of the Royal army, for the space of three
summer weeks, was most tantalising to all the newsmongers. "The
Howes," wrote Horace Walpole, "are gone the Lord knows whither, and
have carried the American war with them, so there is nothing to say on
that head ; which is a great drawback cm correspondence in the shooting
season.'^ Walpole to the Countess of Ossory : Sept. 29, 1777.
214 ^^-^ AMERICAN REVOLUTION
facility, have landed his whole force before the close of
July.^ In order to obtain this infinitesimal result the
British general had squandered a whole month of price-
less hours in the very heart of the military season. He
had prolonged his voyage by three hundred and fifty
unnecessary miles, exposing to the risks of the ocean his
unwieldy crowd of thirteen score vessels;'^ and demora-
lising his soldiers, on the eve of a critical campaign, by
a protracted spell of idleness and relaxed discipline,
aggravated by much distress and discomfort. They had
endured one night of tempest, and enough foul weather
to make the most of them sea-sick ; but generally
speaking the wind was dead, and the heat almost in-
supportable. The ponderous armada, for long spaces
of time together, moved at the rate of a knot an hour ;
and row-boats went about from ship to ship in quest
of fresh provisions, or a few butts of drinkable water.
For the supply in the tanks soon ran low, and became
most offensive to taste and smell ; the men had to be
put on very short allowance ; and great numbers of
horses were thrown overboard as a humane alternative
to letting them perish of thirst. The fierce sun, which
had been very trying even on the open sea, was almost
intolerable on the close waters of Chesapeake Bay. Our
troops sate all day on deck, packed betv/een the bul-
warks under the scorching rays ; for the cabins were as
stifling and fetid as the hold of a West Indian slaver.
But they did not need pity so much as the brave English-
men who, in the far-off region of Lake Champlain and
^ The course, and the length, of Howe's digression are illustrated by
an outline map of the sea-coast to the south of New York, which is
enclosed in a corner of the larger map at the end of this volume.
2 A full and authentic narrative of the expedition exists in the journal
of Captain John Montresor, the Chief Engineer of Sir William Howe's
army. Captain Montresor put the total number of British vessels at
two hundred and sixty-six. American spectators counted two hundred
and twenty ships as the fleet went past Annapolis, nearly three quarters
of the way up the gulf of the Chesapeake. By that time the worst
sailers, — and many were very bad, — had been left far out of sight to the
rearward.
THE MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE 21 5
the upper Hudson, looked wistfully for the help which
failed to come. In the last third of August matters
had begun to go badly with Burgoyne ; and his staff
officers were already straining their ears to catch the
sound of Howe's cannon while that strange comrade,
after eight and twenty days' sail in the wrong direction,
was fighting the tides by day, and lying at anchor by
night, four hundred and fifty miles away among the
mud-banks of Virginia.
Howe was deeply to blame ; but another great man
had been concerned in the business whose negligence
and folly were nothing less than criminal. When Lord
George Germaine had planned a combined movement
against Albany from three remote quarters, he should
have sent precise and minute directions to all the three
commanders, and especially to that general whose
army was twice as large as the two other columns
together. But, as a matter of fact. Sir William Howe
never received any definite orders at all. He had not
been consulted about the proposed invasion from
Canada ; he had always disapproved of it ; and he had
dutifully kept Germaine informed of his own intentions
to attack Philadelphia by sea. On the twenty-sixth of
March the London War Office transmitted to him a
copy of the letter of instructions addressed to Governor
Carleton and General Burgoyne ; and that letter con-
tained a sentence to the effect that the Secretary of
State would communicate with Sir William Howe by
the next packet. No such communication ever reached
Howe ; but nearly two months afterwards, on the
eighteenth of May, Germaine wrote to him at great
length, acquiescing in the expedition to Philadelphia,
and incidentally expressing a vague hope that his
Pennsylvanian campaign might be concluded in time
for him to co-operate with the army which was moving
south from Canada. When that despatch at length over-
took Sir William Howe, he was already in Chesapeake
Bay. That was a sample of the vigilance and the
punctuality which Lord George Germaine, sitting in
2l6 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
William Pitt's old office-chair, applied to the work of
organising victory in America.^
There is reason to believe that some words of advice
had lately reached the British General from a very sin-
gular quarter. General Charles Lee was still a prisoner
at New York, in strict custody. Eager to curry favour
with his captors, he appears to have laid before Sir
William Howe and his brother a memorial suggesting an
armed occupation of the Central Colonies, and assuring
them, from his own certain knowledge, that Marylanders
and Pennsylvanians were nearly all Tories at heart, and
would flock in crowds to the Royal standard as soon as
it was planted within their borders. The invasion of
Pennsylvania may have been recommended by Lee,
and it undoubtedly was sanctioned by Germaine ; but
Howe's notion of approaching Philadelphia by the Bay
of Chesapeake, when he had already come within a few
miles of it by the Bay of Delaware, was entirely his
own ; and it has furnished military critics with his
measure as a strategist.
However circuitous had been his journey, and
however many weeks he might have spent upon the
way. Sir William Howe was on the spot at last. His
presence at the Head of Elk was an untoward
phenomenon in the eyes of George Washington. A
larger force of British infantry than had contended
at Dettingen, — gallant and well-equipped veterans who
in the course of this war had gained several victories,
and had never yet been worsted in a general engagement,
1 An explanation of Lord George's silence is now in some of the
histories ; but it should be received with caution, if not with incredulity.
It is stated that a letter, giving Sir William Howe positive and explicit
orders to co-operate with Burgoyne, had been drafted in the English War
Office at the end of March ; but that Germaine went out of town before it
was fair-copied, and forgot to sign and send it. To anyone who has had
charge of a public department, — with Permanent Secretaries, and Private
Secretaries, to keep him in mind of his duties, — the story is unbelievable.
It has its origin in a private memoir by Lord Shelburne ; but Lord
Shelburne, when jotting down reminiscences in the seclusion of his study,
was no safe authority for anecdotes reflecting upon the public men of his
own time.
THE MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE 2\J
— stood within five days' march of the capital of the
Confederacy. They were commanded by a leader whose
reputation would be hopelessly ruined unless on this
occasion he fought the war to an end ; and who, though
ill quaHfied to direct the abstruse operations of an exten-
sive campaign, had never failed, when in actual contact
with an enemy, to handle his troops with skill and cool-
ness, and with a dogged resolution which would accept
of no denial. Howe, moreover, was in stronger force
than his adversary. Washington, who some months
previously sent two of his best brigades to the assistance
of Schuyler, within the last week had deprived himself
of Colonel Morgan's invaluable corps of riflemen in order
to strengthen General Gates for the final and decisive
struggle at Saratoga. An attempt had been made to
fill the void in the ranks of the main Repubhcan army
by calling out the militia of Maryland and Pennsylvania.
But those States were less than half-hearted in the cause
of the Revolution, and only ten or twelve hundred of
their sons appeared under arms in the camp on the
Neshaminy ; — a humbling contrast to the multitude
of New Englanders who were mustering at Stillwater
to oppose Burgoyne. Washington could put in line just
eleven thousand Americans against seventeen thousand
of the best soldiers in Europe. And yet, however
unequal might be the odds and poor the chances, he
was determined not to surrender Philadelphia without
a battle. He instinctively felt that so open a confession
of inferiority, — made at the very outset of the Penn-
sylvanian campaign, and with Burgoyne still unbeaten
in the North, — would damp the spirit of the rebellion,
and bring about, in all Hkelihood, a total collapse of
the national resistance.
Washington, nearly a week after date, received intelli-
gence that the British fleet had been seen in Chesa-
peake Bay. He at once set his troops in motion ; and the
very next evening he encamped five miles to the north-
ward of Philadelphia. On Sunday the twenty-fourth
of August he held what in that poverty-stricken army
2l8 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
passed for a dress-parade, and marched his whole force
through the main avenues of the city. His men had long
ago walked through their boot-soles. Their clothes were
parti-coloured, and discoloured, and for the most part
in rags and tatters ; and the least badly dressed among
them were those who wore the hunting-shirt of brown
linen. ^ It was remarked that they did not step in time,
nor hold their heads erect, nor cock their hats at one and
the same angle. But they had secured a certain amount
of uniformity by decking themselves with green boughs;
the horses were in fine condition, fresh from a fort-
night's rest in luxuriant pastures ; the drums and fifes
did their utmost ; and the Stars and Stripes on the
regimental flags were, to many of the spectators, a new
and deeply interesting sight. The crowd cheered lustily
as the long column passed down Front Street and up
Chestnut Street, — a swaying mass all alive with rustling
foliage and gUttering gun-barrels, and nobly headed by
George Washington on his most stately charger. At
his side rode a French nobleman who had already
seen enough of American infantry to pronounce them
fine and warlike troops, commanded by officers of zeal
and courage.^ He was no bad judge of a soldier;
for ever since the age of fifteen he had been a Black
Musketeer of King Louis's household.
That dreary period of suspense, through which
Washington of late was passing, had been lighted up
for him by one bright and very memorable episode.
The Marquis de Lafayette was a conspicuous member of
the rising generation in France. He was a typical aristo-
crat, bred up under the usual conditions, and endowed
with all the real or supposed advantages, of his class.
He had six Christian names, of which the first was Marie.
As a matter of course he was a soldier, and had been
married while still a boy to a mere child, — a daughter
of the Due d' Ayen, the head of the house of de Noailles ;
but, (which was by no means a matter of course,) he
1 Memoires de ma main ; jusqu'en Vannee 1780, du General Lafayette,
^ Lafayette's Memoires.
THE MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE 219
dearly loved both his wife and his profession. The
youthful couple had been in high favour with Madame
du Barry during the last months of her sway ; and, when
Marie Antoinette became Queen, they were among the
chosen few who, to the intense jealousy of the excluded
and the uninitiated, were admitted to the private
theatricals, and the fancy-dress quadrilles, which were
the pastimes of the royal household. But now, at
the age of nineteen, Lafayette was a stern Republican,
and on that account only the more popular in a society
prone to amuse itself with abstract opinions, the
portentous and inevitable consequences of which were
less distant than the triflers, or even the philosophers
and the statesmen, could then foresee. The Declara-
tion of American Independence roused him like a call
to boot and saddle. Here at length was a republic,
which from across the ocean looked as pure and austere
as the Rome of Fabricius or Camillus ; and Lafayette
slept on thorns until he could place at the disposal of
the sacred cause his military skill and valour, and,
(a much rarer commodity in the American Confederacy,)
his abundance of hard cash. His project soon became
known in the upper circles both of France and England,
which then were in close and habitual contact. All
Paris was discussing the " young courtier, with a pretty
wife, a small family, and an income of fifty thousand
crowns a year," ^ who was abandoning the first two,
and taking with him as much of the last as he could
scrape together, in order to go to the assistance of the
American insurgents. Madame du Deffand duly im-
parted to Horace Walpole the romantic story, which
she regarded as the most interesting news of the day.
" Of course," she said, " it is a piece of folly ; but it
does him no discredit. He receives more praise than
blame." "We talk chiefly," (so Gibbon wrote from
London,) "■ of the Marquis de la Fayette. He is about
twenty, with 130,000 Livres a year; the nephew of
^ The Chevalier de Marais to his mother in the country. The letti r
is quoted in The Life of General Lafayette^ by Bayard Tuckerman.
220 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Noailles, who is ambassador here. He has bought the
Duke of Kingston's yacht, and is gone to join the
Americans. The Court appears to be angry with
him."i
No one was really angry with him ; for he was as
good a fellow as Charles Fox, beneath a modest, and
even embarrassed, demeanour which conciliated far
more than it repelled. Marie Antoinette was person-
ally very fond of the English ; ^ but, with an inconsis-
tency pardonable to a royal beauty of one-and-twenty,
she took a warm interest in Lafayette and his fortunes.
Everybody wished well to his enterprise, but every-
body was afraid that he never would come back alive ;
for the men of his race had seldom died old, or else-
where than on the field of battle.^ He consulted the
Comte de Broglie ; and the old warrior tried to turn
him from his purpose in pathetic language. *'I saw
your uncle," (he said,) " fall in the Italian wars. I was
present when your father was killed at Minden ; and
I will not have on my conscience the destruction of the
only branch which remains to the family." But, before
the interview was at an end, de Broglie had not only
promised to guard the young man's secret, but had
agreed to put him in relations with Baron de Kalb, an
officer of advanced years, who knew the American
colonies of old and who could speak English well. In
the early spring of 1777 Lafayette, as a blind, paid a
visit to his wife's uncle, the French Ambassador in
London. He danced at a ball given by Lord George
Germaine, and was introduced to Lord Rawdon and Sir
Henry Clinton, who had come back from New York for
a winter's pleasure in the interval between two cam-
paigns. But he made no attempt to disguise his
^ Gibbon to Holroyd ; April 12, 1777.
2 " I hear Lady Stormont is a great favourite at Paris. The Queen
pays her every possible respect, and has made a very fine ball for her ;
but the English are the greatest favourites she has." Letter from Lady
Knight to Mrs. Drake ; Toulouse, October 6, 1776.
^ •' Les Lafayette etaient reputes pour tomber tous sur les champs
de bataille, et de bonne heure." Doniol, Vol. I., page 654.
THE MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE 221
sympathy with the American rebels ; and, attentive to
the dictates of honour, he decHned an invitation given
by King George himself to inspect the military and
naval preparations that were in progress at Portsmouth.
Meanwhile a ship had been secured for him, over the
purchase and outfit of which he was horribly cheated ;
for in his eagerness to depart he set his name without
examination to any and every paper that was placed
before him. His worst difficulties began after his
return from England ; for Lord Stormont, our ambas-
sador at Paris, remonstrated sharply ; and the French
government intimated to the Due d'Ayen that he
would do well to apply for a lettre de cachet^ and to
carry off his son-in-law on a protracted family tour in
Italy. Lafayette eloped to the coast in disguise, after
a series of curious adventures and hair-breadth escapes
like those which, half a generation afterwards, befell
the unhappy aristocrats who were flying from the
guillotine ; ^ and before the close of April he stood out
to sea in his slow and ill-supplied vessel, with Baron de
Kalb, and ten or twelve other officers, on board. They
suffered greatly from the rolling and tossing, from
bad eating and drinking, and from fear of the British
cruisers. Lafayette, who got well sooner than his
companions, employed the immense leisure of ocean
travel in studying English, and reading military books,
in order to qualify himself for being a Major General, —
a rank which he regarded as "a brevet of immortality." ^
On the fifty-fourth day after leaving Europe he touched
land at the mouth of a river in South Carolina, about
twenty leagues to the North of Charleston.
The party reached Philadelphia on the twenty-
seventh July, after a tedious, and exceedingly expensive,
journey of six hundred miles through a country which
1 Lafayette, in the dress of a courier, rode ahead of the post-chaise,
and orrlered relays of horses. He slept on straw in the stables ; and he
was recwgnised by an innkeeper's dau;;hter, whose motith he closed l)y a
warning gesture.
2 A Madame Lafayette j a bord de la Victoire, ce 30 Mai, 1777.
222 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
the others thought unattractive and barbarous, but
which everywhere presented itself to Lafayette's fancy
as an enchanted land. Franklin and Deane had
despatched from France a letter informing Congress
that a nobleman of great wealth had bought a ship,
and had started across the Atlantic to take service in
the American army ; that he was extremely beloved
in his own country ; and that any compliment which
could be paid him would be pleasing, not only to his
powerful relations and to the Court, but to the whole
French nation.^ That letter, however, had not yet
come to hand; and, — while the coffee-houses in Paris
were echoing with Lafayette's name, and the theatres
were vociferously applauding any passage which could
be construed into an allusion to his expedition, — he
and his comrades met with a chilling and humiliating
reception in Philadelphia. Congress made them wait
in the street while a delegate was fetched who spoke
their language, and who was kept near at hand for the
express purpose of sending foreign officers about their
business. This gentleman indicated to them, in very
intelligible French, that they were a parcel of adven-
turers, and that Philadelphia contained far too many
of their sort already .^
Lafayette restrained his temper, and drew up a
short note glancing at the sacrifices which he had
made for the American cause. He claimed nothing
in return, except the right of serving that cause at
his own expense, and in the character of a volunteer.
Congress, impressed by his proud and quiet tone, and
acknowledging him as a very uncommon specimen of the
foreign mercenary, nominated him an unattached Major
General without command, and without pay ; but the
^ Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane to the Committee of Foreign
Affairs; Paris, May 25, 1777. Wharton's Diplomatic Correspondence;
Vol. II., page 322.
2 An exceedingly amusing account of these proceedings may be found
in the Memoir of a French officer in Lafayette's train, which was men-
tioned in the second chapter of this volume.
BRANDYWINE AND PAOLI 22^
rest of his followers, with the exception of Baron de
Kalb, were sent back to France at the cost of the
American Treasury.^ A few days afterwards Lafayette
met Washington at a public banquet, and recognised
him " among a throng of officers and civilians by the
majesty of his stature and his countenance." ^ The
young French courtier was now at last in the presence
of a real king. Washington received him graciously,
bade him welcome to America, and invited him to
become one of his military family if he could put up
with very much worse dinners than those to which
he had been accustomed at Versailles. That was the
commencement of a lifelong friendship. Lafayette
made Washington his hero and his model ; and
Washington soon came to regard Lafayette as that
which Nature had denied him, — a son.^ History has
seldom had to tell of a more honourable connection
between two men more unselfishly devoted to great
principles.
On the twenty-fifth of August, 1777, the British
began to disembark in the northeast corner of Mary-
land. It was no easy matter. The upper reaches of
Chesapeake Bay were intricate and perilous even for
single ships ; and the navigation of those waters was
believed by the RepubHcan authorities in Philadelphia
to be impossible for a convoy of two hundred transports,
with at least the average proportion of inexpert and
1 In the French Officer's Memoir the American names are sometimes
quite unrecognisable. " Monsieur de Canoite " undoubtedly stands for
"Conway;" but " le sieur Moose, membre de Congrois," most certainly
cannot be identitied among the signers of the Declaration of Independence.
He possibly was Robert Morris.
2 Lafayette's Memoirs.
^General Matthieu Dumas relates how, in the autumn of 1780,
\Vashingt(m paid a visit to Rochambeau's headquarters accompaniecl by
the principal members of his staff. " I was particularly impressed,"
Dumas wrote, " by the marks of affection which the General displayed
for his pupil, and son of adoption, the Marquis de Lafayette. He
watched him with complacency as they sat opposite each other at table,
and listened to all he said with visible interest."
224 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
unhandy skippers. The Elk River itself was full of
shoals and sandbanks ; but Lord Howe took personal
charge of the operation, and expended upon it that
minute and systematic energy which he threw into
every professional act of his protracted, and deservedly
successful, career. Boats were carefully stationed to
mark out the points of danger ; the larger vessels
ploughed a channel through the muddy bar; and the
Admiral's flag-ship, for the time being, was always the
man-of-war which had made its way farthest to the front.^
Before dark on the twenty-sixth every soldier, field-
piece, and waggon had been safely landed ; and orders
were issued to march at three in the morning on the
morrow. But that very night it turned to rain, and
continued raining for six and thirty hours. The roads
were reported to be impassable for such of the famished
horses as had survived that dreadful voyage; and
all the biscuits and cartridges, served out to the troops,
were spoiled in the pouches. The Guards alone lost
sixteen thousand rounds of ammunition. Moreover
the conduct of affairs had passed, from the brother
who subdued difficulties, to the brother who, too often,
made them an excuse for supineness and delay. Not
before the third of September did the Royal troops
commence their march ; and during the next seven
days they advanced just ten miles.
Sir William Howe was encountered from the very out-
set by a grave disappointment. He had come a hundred
and twenty leagues out of his road in order to open the
campaign in a region where the population was sup-
posed to be exceptionally loyal; but on his arrival he
nowhere found anything except lukewarmness and
suspicion, while in most localities he met with nobody
at all. He had put out an offer of protection to the
peaceably disposed subjects of his Majesty in the
Colonies of Maryland and Pennsylvania; but the ex-
1 "The Admiral performed the different parts of a commander, inferior
officer, and pilot with his usual ability and perseverance." Annual Register
for 1777.
BRANDYWINE AND PAOLI 22$
periences of the preceding winter in New Jersey had
taught the people of every province in the Confederacy
what such a proclamation was worth. The most com-
mon political sentiment in all the districts which lay
along the west bank of the Delaware River was an im-
partial desire to be left alone by both political parties ;
and farmers were equally afraid of being plundered by
the Hessians, and of being persecuted as Loyalists by
the Republican committees after the Royal army had
retired from their neighbourhood. *'The inhabitants,"
wrote Richard Fitzpatrick, "are almost all fled from
their houses, and have driven their cattle with them :
so we do not live very luxuriously, though in a country
that has every appearance of plenty, and is more beauti-
ful than can be conceived wherever the woods are at all
cleared." ^
Washington meanwhile, on his own element, was as
busy as Admiral Howe among the shallows of Chesa-
peake Bay. He stayed on at Elk Town after the Royal
ships were already well within the Elk River, packing
off the public stores ; and seeing that granaries were
emptied, and horses and carts removed, all along the
line of road which the British were bound to follow in
their advance upon Philadelphia. He spent three days
in reconnoitring the country between his own head-
quarters at Wilmington, and Howe's outposts, — at great
risk to himself and his companions. Franklin, with a
touch of sentiment unusual in official despatches, had
begged Congress to see that Lafayette was not killed in
battle, for the sake of his ''beautiful young wife," who
was expecting a baby ; and he had therefore recom-
mended that the Marquis should be placed under the
protecting wing of the Commander-in-Chief himself.
Franklin should by this time have known George
^ Richard Fitzpatrick to Lady Ossory ; Camp near the head of Elk
River, Maryland, September, 1777. Fitzpatrick had lately joined Howe's
army. "Nothing in the world," (he wrote from New \'ork in July,) "can
be so disagreeable and odious to me as being obliged to serve in this
execrable war."
VOL. IV. Q
226 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Washington better. That true Virginian, whether in
war or in the chase, went fearlessly wherever a good
horse could carry him ; and on more than one occasion
Howe's skirmishers had a very near view indeed of
a soberly dressed officer mounted on a powerful bay
charger, who did not shirk his fences, and who was
closely attended everywhere by an aide-de-camp in
a rich foreign uniform. The American generals now
began to regret the absence of Colonel Morgan and his
five hundred marksmen. Anthony Wayne suggested
that a picked body of troops should be told off for
special service, ''after the example of Julius Caesar at
the siege of Alesia;"^ and Washington, without going
so far back for a precedent, selected a hundred rank
and file from each of his brigades, and confided them
to the charge of General Maxwell, who was accounted
a fighting officer. Maxwell displayed activity, and
tried his strength against Howe's advance-guard in a
warm encounter ;2 but he was ill supported by the
local militia, and it soon became evident that the
American army at Wilmington was in too exposed a
situation for safety. On the ninth of September Wash-
ington retreated northwards, and arrayed his troops
upon the farther side of Brandy wine Creek, just where
the little river was traversed by the main highway to
Philadelphia.
In those primitive times there were few bridges ;
and the traffic passed through the water at Chad's
Ford, ten or a dozen miles above the point of con-
fluence where Brandywine Creek was lost in the broad
and stately current of the Delaware. Below the ford
the stream ran swift, deep, and narrow between pre-
cipitous banks ; and that portion of Washington's line
was sufficiently guarded by a small detachment of not
^ Wayne to Washington ; Camp at Wilmington, Sept. 2, 1777.
2 The future Lord Harris was shot through the leg in this skirmish,
and was reduced to follow the army in a chaise. At the battle of
Brandywine he had the horse taken out of the shafts, and rode it bare-
backed at the head of his company across the ford, and over the enemy's
breastworks, before the doctors could again lay hands on him.
BRANDYWINE AND PAOLI 22/
very trustworthy militia. Anthony Wayne held the
ford, which was protected by intrenchments, and raked
by no fewer than three batteries. Next in order came
Nathanael Greene, and his two well-drilled brigades ;
while Sullivan, with three weak divisions, stood farther
up the creek to the right. The position was very
strong indeed as against an unenterprising adversary.
In order to turn the right flank of the Americans, the
British would have to march almost as many miles as
they had contrived to cover during the whole of the
past fortnight. If Washington was attacked in front,
he felt confident that he could repulse his enemy. If,
on the other hand, Howe went dawdling up-stream, in
search of a practicable ford, with half the Royal army,
Washington would have ample time to re-cross the river,
and defeat the other half long before his dilatory oppo-
nent re-appeared upon the scene of action.^ But an
unpleasant surprise was in store for the American
general. Throughout the next forty-eight hours Sir
WilHam Howe was at his very best; and Washington
found himself confronted, — not by the slothful and
over-cautious strategist of the Jersey campaigns, — but
by the high-mettled warrior who had stormed the
redoubt at Bunker's Hill, and the consummate tactician
who had rolled up Putnam's left and centre in headlong
rout on Long Island. Howe's plan for forcing the
passage of the Brandywine was faultless ; and it was
carried out, from first to last, with rare exactitude and
notable vigour. No time was wasted ; none of his
fighting strength was hoarded or squandered ; and all
his troops were taken • promptly and resolutely into
battle, the best first.
On Wednesday the tenth September the Royal forces
were collected around the Quaker meeting-house at
Kennet Square in Chester County, — a well-chosen
rendezvous, distant enough from the enemy to baflfle
observation, and near enough for early and decisive
1 All the military events related in this, and the three subsequent,
chapters can be traced in the larger map at the end of the volume.
q2
228 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
action on the morrow. Howe divided his regiments
into two powerful columns, and confided them to two
first-rate officers, Lieutenant General von Knyphausen
and Lord Cornwallis. He informed them both of the
services which he expected from them, and thence-
forward left them to the unhampered guidance of their
own judgment. At four in the morning Cornwallis
started in the direction of the fords which crossed the
upper Forks of the Brandywine far away in the north-
west quarter. Sir William Howe rode with him, not
because he distrusted his capacity as a leader, but be-
cause it was in the company of Cornwallis that the
sharpest fighting would most probably be witnessed.
An hour afterwards, von Knyphausen began his march ;
drove through the river Maxwell's people, who had been
advantageously posted on the southern bank ; opened
fire from his numerous artillery ; and made ostentatious
arrangements for an assault upon the centre of the hos-
tile position. His threatening attitude fixed the attention,
and perturbed the mind, of the American commander.
Washington had been informed that some Royal troops
were moving northwards, parallel to the Brandywine
River ; but the reports which reached him about their
apparent strength, and their rate of progress, were in a
high degree confused and contradictory. He had not
the means of getting at the positive truth, because he
was very weak in cavalry, and his generals of division
counted the horsemen whom he was able to place at
their disposal, not by regiments or by squadrons, but
by units. ^ His morning passed away amidst distracting
doubts and varying counsels ; but certainty at length
arrived in the shape of a brief note from General
Sullivan, who announced that the British had appeared
in rear of his right, coming down on him in great force.
Two brigades of them were already within two miles of
^ " I have never," wrote Sullivan, " had any Ught horse with me since
I joined the army. I found four when I came to Brentford's Ford, two
of whom I sent off with Captain Hazen to Jones's Ford." Sullivan to
Washington; Oct. 24, 1777.
BRANDY WINE AND PAOLI 229
his position ; and they were followed by a cloud of dust
stretching far back into the interior of the country.
Washington instantaneously despatched General Sul-
livan with orders to plant the whole of his command
athwart the path of the advancing enemy, who by this
time were very near a place of worship frequented by
the Quakers of Birmingham Township ; for on that day,
by the irony of fate, the British troops began their march
to battle from one Friends' meeting-house, and came into
collision with their adversaries in the immediate neigh-
bourhood of another. 1 Sullivan, by no fault of his own,
had started half an hour too late. One of his three
divisions, and a brigade in another, were led by worth-
less generals. The woods were puzzling. The soldiers,
though they could travel quick and shoot straight, were
slow and awkward at their tactical evolutions ; and the
various sections of the American line had not yet got
into touch before the flower of the Royal infantry came
sweeping forward, eager for combat, and in perfect
order.
Cornwallis knew when to hurry, and when to take
his time. He had pressed the pace for ten consecutive
hours over sixteen miles of rough and unexplored coun-
try ; and then he halted till the rear of his column had
closed up, and deployed his whole force as coolly and
methodically as if he were in Hyde Park or on Houns-
low Heath. In front were the Guards, the grenadiers
and light infantry, and the Hessian Chasseurs ; while
eight English battalions, twelve hundred Germans, and
two squadrons of cavalry followed in support, or in
reserve. Their right flank was secured by the Brandy-
wine River ; and with everything which stood in front
of them they were themselves prepared to deal. Corn-
wallis gave the word. His troops charged, and at both
extremities of the Hne they charged home. Two bri-
1 In those sparsely settled, but essentially civilised communities, the
churches, the Court-houses, — and, it must be admitted, the taverns, — were
frerjuently planted at the intersection of the main roads, and played a
prominent part in the topography of the war.
230 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
gades, on the American right, broke and fled ; and
Sullivan's own division, after a short resistance, escaped
in disorder to the rear. Lord Stirling, in the centre,
had come early on to the ground, and had found time to
plant his cannon, and draw up his battalions, in accord-
ance with his own rigid notions of military perfection.
He repelled the attacks delivered by the troops in front
of him ; and he made a stout fight of it even when some
victorious British regiments, which had disposed of their
own opponents, clustered in on him from several quar-
ters. Sullivan, after vainly trying to rally the fugitives
of his own division, exerted himself with desperate
valour to maintain this last fragment of his line of
battle. Two of his aides-de-camp were killed. Lafayette,
— who had begged, or taken, leave of absence from
Washington's side, — hastened in the direction of the
music to the sound of which so many of his progenitors
had died ; and was badly wounded while, sword in hand
and dismounted, he was making himself busy in the
thick of the tumult. At last, but not until the English
were everywhere within pistol-range, the Republicans
gave way, and threw themselves into the forest.
General von Knyphausen, a veteran who could in-
terpret the symptoms of a battle, had already observed
large bodies of Americans filing off northwards on the
other side of the river. After a certain interval of time
his ears were greeted by a burst of artillery fire, which
he recognised as the voice of Cornwallis. Then he
sent his infantry across Chad's Ford in a dense succes-
sion of regiments, distinguished one from another by
numerals which are all of them so many titles of honour
in the estimation of an old-fashioned Englishman. The
Fourth Foot, the Fifth Foot, the Seventy-first Glasgow
Highlanders, and the Twenty-third Fusiliers splashed
through the water, scrambled up the bank, ran over the
ditch and parapet, and captured a hostile breastwork
with many of the defenders, and all the cannon. They
drove the Republicans before them, in a running fight,
from one enclosure to another ; until the British Guards,
BRANDYWINE AND PAOLI 23 1
— who had lost their way in the thicket, but had kept
their faces in the right direction, — stumbled up against
Anthony Wayne's retreating battaHons, and scattered
them in hopeless rout. Washington's army was now
caught between two bodies of troops, advancing at right
angles to each other from two widely separated points,
and meeting at last on the field of victory. The Ameri-
cans were exactly in the same plight as the Austrians
at Sadowa, and the French at Waterloo ; and they would
have fared as badly as either of them, if Washington
had lost his presence of mind in that moment of disaster
and incipient panic. He already had sent off Nathanael
Greene to the assistance of Sullivan. He himself rode
northwards to the sound of the cannon at headlong
speed; while Greene's infantry did their best to prove
that Virginians, in case of necessity, were quite capable
of getting across country on foot.^ They marched and
ran four miles in forty-two minutes ; and their com-
mander had just time enough to post them across a
defile, some furlongs to the rear of Dilworth village,
before Cornwallis was upon him. It was the first occa-
sion that the two famous captains, whose chivalrous
antagonism signalised and dignified the later history of
the war, encountered each other on anything approach-
ing to equal terms. Their soldiers were hotly engaged
during an hour, — or what seemed to them an hour, —
at a distance of not more than fifty yards apart along a
very narrow front. ^ At length Greene slowly drew off
^ When the distant firing began, Washington requested a Mr. Joseph
Brown to guide him to the front by the shortest cut. Brown was an
elderly man, and made many excuses ; but he was hoisted on to a charger
and forced to lead the way to Birmingham Meeting-house at a gallop,
with the General and the Staff behind him. " Brown said that the horse
leapt all the fences without difficulty, and was followed in like manner
by the others. The head of General Washington's horse was constantly
at the flank of the one on which he himself was mounted ; and the
General was continually repeating to him : * Push along, old man. Push
along, old man.' "
2 Diary of Lieutenant James MacMichael. This was an officer in
a Pennsylvanian regiment which, after the defeat of its own division,
attached itself to General Greene, and remained with him till night-
fall.
232 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
his troops, and disappeared into the darkness unpursued,
and, (so far as he himself was concerned,) undefeated.
His skill and valour, and the late hour, — for the battle
did not begin in earnest until half-past four in the after-
noon, — enabled the rest of the Republican army to get
safe away to Chester on the Delaware River, thirteen
good miles from the field of battle. That battle was
won by bold and judicious manoeuvres ; but the event
had not been finally decided without a good deal of
close and obstinate fighting. Nearly six hundred Brit-
ish and Germans were killed or wounded ; and the
Americans lost eleven pieces of artillery, and above a
thousand men, of whom the third part were prisoners.^
The Schuylkill River was thenceforward the sole
remaining obstacle between the Royal army and the
capital city of the rebellion. On the twentieth of
September Washington lay in camp at Potsgrove, about
five and thirty miles up stream from Philadelphia. The
British were south of the river, in the neighbourhood
of Valley Forge ; and Wayne's division had been
detached across the Schuylkill with orders to fall upon
Sir William Howe's rear-guard, and capture his train
of baggage. The situation of these exposed and isolated
Americans was hazardous in the extreme ; but the
prospect had no terrors, and immense attractions, for
their sanguine and intrepid general. ** There never,"
(so he wrote to Washington,) "was or will be a finer
opportunity of giving the enemy a fatal blow than at
present. For God's sake push on as fast as possible."
Anthony Wayne had been an assiduous student of the
most admired military authors ; but he now was to
have a lesson from a master who taught him more in a
single night than he had learned from Marshal Saxe's
1 On the day after the battle, Sir "William Howe informed Washington
that every possible attention had been paid to the wounded Americans,
and requested him to send some surgeons in aid of the British regimental
doctors, whose hands were very full. Among the Continental officers
wounded at Brandywine was a brave New Jersey colonel, who weighed three
hundred and twenty pounds ; and who some years afterwards was obliged
to leave the army because no horse could carry him faster than at a walk.
BKANDYWINE AND PAOLI 233
Reveries, or Caesar's Commentaries, in the course of half
a lifetime. The best officer in Howe's army, short
of Cornwallis, was Charles Grey, who died Earl Grey of
Howick in Northumberland, and who was the father of
the celebrated Whig prime-minister. It once was the
fashion in America to write about General Grey as if
he was of a pair with Governor Tryon ; but, in truth,
he was a high-minded and honourable gentleman,
and a soldier every inch of him. He had been on
Prince Ferdinand's staff in Germany ; was wounded
at Minden ; and afterwards, like a good comrade,
went back to his regiment, and was wounded again at
Kloster Kampen. In that memorable camisado Grey
learned by personal experience the important truth
that, in a night attack, the less noise made the better.
Wayne, who intended to take Howe unawares, had
used every precaution to conceal his movements ; but
the people of the district were mostly Tories, and Sir
William had soon been told all about him. Wayne's
troops were encamped around the Paoli tavern, on or
near a farm which, by a curious coincidence, had been
his own father's property. The night of the twentieth
September was dark and wet ; and the Republican
infantry had been specially enjoined to take off their
coats, and fold them round their cartridge boxes in
order to save their ammunition from damage.^
General Grey, on his part, would have nothing to
do with cartridges. His soldiers were forbidden to
load ; and the flints were knocked out from any
muskets which had been loaded already. The Royal
troops, in order to prevent an alarm being given, led
along with them in custody all the inhabitants whom
they encountered on the road. It was as complete a
surprise, and as utter a rout, as ever occurred in
modern warfare. The British ran cheering in among
the watch-fires, and fell on with sword and bayonet.
Wayne induced some of his men to stand long enough
1 Extract from Wayne's defence before a General Court Martial.
234 ^-^-^ AMERICAN REVOLUTION
to let off a couple of volleys. He succeeded in carrying
away his artillery, and consoled himself by imagining
that he had inflicted serious loss upon the assailants ;
but it amounted to very little, for there were precisely
a dozen casualties in the English ranks. Three hundred
of the Americans were killed or wounded, and about
thirty were captured unhurt. The affair has often been
called, unfairly and almost absurdly, the Massacre
of Paoli. Men always attach the idea of cruelty to
modes of warfare in which they themselves are not
proficient ; and Americans liked the bayonet as little
as Englishmen approved of taking dehberate aim at
individual officers. It was currently reported through-
out the Confederacy that quarter had been refused, and
that the wounded were stabbed where they lay ; bu\.
there is no arguing against figures. When the neigh-
bouring farmers assembled next morning to bury their
fallen countrymen, they found only fifty-three dead
bodies. And yet the slaughter of that night was to
Anthony Wayne a mournful, a salutary, and an abiding
memory. Very many years afterwards, on the eve of
a great Indian war, — when he was the most famous
American general who still wore a sword for use, — he
spoke with regret about the tragical necessity of calling
from their homes a multitude of young men in order
to instruct them in " the dreadful trade of death." ^
This second American reverse settled the fate of
Philadelphia. At gun-fire on the evening of the
twenty-second September Sir William Howe issued
orders that his troops should be under arms by the
rising of the moon ; and, just after midnight, they set
^ General Anthony Wayne to Captain William Hayman ; Legionville,
28 December, 1792.
Charges of inhumanity on the part of the Royal troops at Paoli are
supported, in some histories, by quotations from a brutal, and indeed dis-
gusting, letter purporting to be written by a Hessian sergeant. It is
possible that such a document may be in existence ; but there were no
Hessians in General Grey's column, and the letter has the air of a forgery.
In time of war, productions of that class are frequently inserted in the
newspapers by foolish and ill-conditioned people ; and they were unusually
plentiful during the American contest.
BRANDYWINE AND PAOLI 235
forth upon their march to the nearest fords. Before
dawn the fighting men were across the water ; and at
three in the afternoon the entire British army was
planted, with all its artillery and all its baggage-carts,
on the northern bank of the Schuylkill River, between
General Washington and the city which he had been
powerless to protect.
It was a fearful moment for those of the towns-
people who had committed themselves to the support
of the Revolution ; and even convinced and conscien-
tious Tories could not view without some trepidation
the approach of so many thousands of expensive and
exacting guests. Contemporary letters give a vivid
picture of the dismay which prevailed almost universally
among the citizens when the cannonade at Brandy wine
Creek was distinctly heard in the southern suburbs
of Philadelphia, and when the town-crier warned all
householders to close their shutters, and called upon
every man who could carry a gun to appear at the
muster on the Commons. " Gracious God," (wrote
one poor woman,) *Mook down upon us, and send
help from above ! Every face you see looks wild
and pale with fear and amazement, and quite over-
whelmed with distress." The highways which ran
north and east were soon thronged with Whig fugitives.
Congress, ashamed of its hasty, and altogether, un-
necessary, flight to Baltimore in the previous December,
behaved with coolness and self-possession in presence
of this much more alarming crisis. The British and
German prisoners of war, the Government archives,
and the more portable of the national stores, were
conveyed betimes to distant places of security ; and all
the militiamen of Pennsylvania were directed to hold
themselves in readiness to march at an hour's notice.
And then, — having entrusted Washington with full
powers to promote or remove officers, and to make
requisitions of food and clothing for the use of his
soldiers, during a period of sixty days, and within a
circumference of seventy miles around his own head-
236 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
quarters, — ^ Congress adjourned first to Lancaster, and
afterwards still farther west to York. There, all through
the winter, a quorum of members continued to legislate,
to administrate, and, (with still greater zest,) to wrangle
and intrigue, as busily and intently as if they had not
an enemy nearer at hand than Quebec. The familiar
names of York and Lancaster, Reading and Chester,
Bristol, Newcastle, and Derby, make the story of this
campaign read like an invasion of England. The whole
nomenclature of the district bore witness to a happier
past, when a romantic and spontaneous affection for the
mother-country pervaded that colony which now was
the home of rebellion and the theatre of war.
On Friday the twenty-sixth September the British
army entered Philadelphia by the Germantown Road,
and marched, in sober triumph, into and through the
heart of the city. The vanguard was commanded by
Lord Cornwallis, who then and always, — in many
quarters of the world, and under circumstances of
extreme temptation, — never failed to display a humanity
and a generosity worthy of the great nation to which
he and his soldiers belonged. The regimental colours
remained in their cases ; but the bands struck up the
tune of *' God Save the King " amidst the acclamations
of several thousand inhabitants, who, (as an English
officer observed,) were mostly women and children.^
Some of the latter, many years afterwards, wrote down
their youthful impressions of the scene. They all
agreed in testifying that the discipline of the Royal troops
was exemplary, and their conduct irreproachable. Men
occasionally dropped out of the line, and asked for milk
or cider ; but, in the case of houses where these appli-
cations became too frequent, a sentinel was stationed
at the door, and relieved hour by hour until the whole
army had filed past. One gentleman, who in 1777 was
only ten years old, never forgot the ** tranquil look
and dignified appearance " of the English infantry.
1 Journal of Captain John Montresor, Chief Engineer of the British
army.
GERMANTO WN 237
" I went Up," he wrote, ** to the front rank of the
Grenadiers when they had entered Second Street.
Several of them addressed me thus : — * How do you do,
young one ? * * How are you, my boy ? ' — in a brotherly
tone that seems still to vibrate on my ear. The
Hessians followed in the rear of the Grenadiers. Their
looks to me were terrific, — their brass caps, their
mustachios, their countenances by nature morose, and
their music that sounded, in better English than they
themselves could speak, ' Plunder ! Plunder ! Plunder ! ' "
Some of the older spectators, and especially the women,
could not avoid comparing that brilliant and martial
procession with the destitute and dilapidated army
which, trying hard to look its best, had traversed the
same hne of streets a few weeks before. The British,
(said a Whig lady,) were clean and healthy, and well-
clad ; and the contrast between them, and General
Washington's poor bare-footed and ragged troops, was
most startling, and aroused a feeling very near akin to
positive despair.^
Outside Philadelphia despair was not the prevailing
emotion among partisans of the Revolution. The cap-
ture of that city in December 1776, or even as late as
April 1777, would have gone far towards damping, and
perhaps extinguishing, the rebellion. In the spring,
(said a well-informed Loyalist,) General Howe might
have done anything ; but he had now given the insur-
gents leisure to collect their whole strength. ^ Ever
since Trenton their courage had been mounting ; and
they had recovered that habit of indomitable self-satis-
faction which, in times of national peril and difficulty,
has always been among the most valuable moral assets
of the American people. Their Republic had no longer
' Letter from Mrs. Stedman to Mrs. Ferguson. Recollections by John
Ashniead of Germantoivn. Reminiscences of Captain J. C, quoted in the
Sixth Volume of the Pennsylvanian Magazine. 7 he Camp on the
Neshaj7iiny\ page 24.
^ Diary of James Allen, of Philadelphia, Counsellor at Jmw.
238 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
anything to fear in the northern quarter, where Bur-
goyne was already entangled within the toils ; and
Washington's soldiers, with the unconscionable opti-
mism of their race, had begun to doubt whether they
really and truly were defeated at Brandywine. They
stoutly maintained that they had not been out-fought,
although they had been out-numbered, and possibly
out-generalled ; and, while faith in their leader was for
the moment somewhat shaken, they continued heartily
to believe in themselves. This view of the matter was
encouraged by Washington, who had proved in a very
recent instance that he was not avaricious of his own
reputation if he could in any way promote the public
advantage by sacrificing a portion of it. The poli-
ticians at Philadelphia, thinking that a battle ought not
to be lost without somebody being punished for it, had
voted to recall Sullivan from the army in order to stand
his trial for misconduct in the field. Washington at
once came manfully forward in defence of his lieutenant.
He told Congress that, so long as Lincoln and Arnold
were absent, he was very short of good Major Generals ;
and that he could not afford to lose the services of a
brave and loyal officer, who had done nothing at
Brandywine except in obedience to his own express
orders. Washington was all the more careful not to
hurt the self-respect of his generals, or repress the
enthusiasm of his rank and file, because he was very
weak in numbers. His militia, hastily scraped together
from States which had long ago sent into the regular
army all the most martial elements in their population,
could not be trusted to face the British muskets ; and
of Continental infantry he had barely eight thousand.
The official returns of the Royal army, in the same
week, showed sixteen thousand men '' fit for duty ; "
which in their case was no routine phrase, for every
one of Sir William Howe's regiments was qualified to
play its part in all the emergencies of war. But Wash-
ington, — except under circumstances where audacity
would have been sheer madness,- — was always a fighting
GERM AN TO WN 239
general ; and he now resolved to take his people while
they were in the humour, and, whether few or many,
to give them one more chance of trying their mettle
against the invader.
The access to Philadelphia from the northwest
lay through the main street of Germantown. That
community, (as the name implies,) had been founded
towards the close of the seventeenth century by Ana-
baptist emigrants of Teutonic origin whose theological
creed was too abnormal, and too sincerely held, to be
tolerated in Europe ; and who accordingly sought and
found, under the broad-minded rule of William Penn,
the religious, the political, and the commercial freedom
denied them on their native soil. " Most of the in-
habitants," wrote a Swedish traveller in the year 1748,
*' are manufacturers, and make almost everything in
such quantity and perfection that, in a short time, this
province will want very little from England." ^ They
exercised their craft in fresh air, and amidst cheerful
surroundings. Germantown is now the favourite resi-
dential suburb of Philadelphia ; and all the surviving
monuments of its simple and artistic past are still held
in high honour. ^ The dwellings, with their quaint
gables and ponderous cornices, — " built of a stone
which is mixed with glimmer, and roofed with shingles
of white cedarwood," — were disposed well apart from
each other in pretty gardens, with orchards and pad-
docks extending back into the adjoining country.^ The
straggling grass-bordered highway, which was called a
street, measured two miles in length ; and halfway
down it stood, and stands, the house of Benjamin Chew,
the Chief Justice of Pennsylvania. He was a magis-
trate so popular, and so universally respected, that,
when the war was over, his fellow-citizens pardoned his
^ Travels into North America^ by Peter Kalm, Professor of Economy
in the University of Abo in Swedish Finland.
2 The Germantown Road and its Associations, a collection of papers
published in 1881 by Mr. Townsend Ward, is well worth reading. The
illustrations are curious and attractive.
* Kalm's Travels.
240 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Toryism, and appointed him once more to high judicia\
office. His stately and ever hospitable mansion, situ-
ated amidst smooth lawns and noble timber, was the
perfection of domestic architecture ; and its beautiful
proportions have been reproduced on a medal issued
as a badge of merit to an English regiment.^ That
house formed the central point of the position where,
in the first week of October 1777, Sir WiUiam Howe
arrayed his army with the object of covering the
approach to Philadelphia. In and about the grounds
was quartered the Fortieth Foot, under Colonel Mus-
grave, who had already done excellent service in the
opening battles of the campaign, and who was soon to
win a name which his countrymen, and still more his
admiring adversaries, have taken good care shall not be
forgotten. A very strong corps of British infantry, —
composed, according to the questionable fashion of that
day, by withdrawing the light companies from ten or
a dozen regiments, — was thrown forward a mile in
advance of the Chew mansion. About as far in rear
of the building, at a distance of something over five
miles from the market-place of Philadelphia, the bulk
of the British troops were encamped along a front of
four thousand yards. If they had been Americans
they would have intrenched themselves, as by instinct,
within eight and forty hours ; but the officers of our
army, — where the Chief Engineer was a Captain, and
nothing more, — regarded such precautions as unmili-
tary, and such labours as mechanical, and even ple-
beian. Sir William Howe himself objected on principle
to field-works. He never, (he said,) favoured their
construction *' at the head of the line, when in force,"
for fear of diminishing the self-reliance, and the well-
founded self-esteem, of his soldiers.
1 John Adams, like all prominent men of every American party, had
sat at the Chief Justice's table. " We were shown into a grand entry and
staircase, and into an elegant and most magnificent chamber until dinner.
The furniture was all rich. . . . Wines most excellent and admirable.
I drank Madeira at a great rate, and found no inconvenience." Adams'^
Diary for September 1774.
GERMANTOWN 24 1
On Friday the third October the Republicans biv-
ouacked in Worcester Township, five miles east of
Skippack Creek, and eighteen miles from the city of
Philadelphia.^ At seven o'clock that evening their
whole army set out for Germantown. Greene com-
manded on the left, and Sullivan on the right ; while
Lord Stirling followed in reserve. Each soldier carried
forty cartridges, and provisions for three days ; and
every man and officer had a piece of white paper fas-
tened in his hat. It was an operation on the plan of
Trenton, — with the same leaders on the same flanks,
a night-march of the same length, and the same ex-
pectation of catching the opponent at a disadvantage
in the early morning. On the present occasion, how-
ever, Washington had a more vigilant and valiant
enemy to deal with ; and the numbers were against
him, and the luck also. It was, moreover, impossible
for ten thousand armed men, and the teams of forty
field-pieces, to traverse unobserved a district which
was largely hostile. Sir William Howe had been in-
formed overnight that an unusual amount of bustle was
visible in the American lines ; and that, beyond all
question, an important movement was afoot. He
warned his generals to be on the alert, but he made no
change in the arrangement of his troops ; and, in point
of fact, it is not easy to see how they could have been
better posted.
The Americans pressed forward through the dark-
ness silently and, (considering the nature of the
country,) very expeditiously. Sullivan arrived first on
the ground, and was quite ready to commence at dawn.
But the dawn never appeared. The night had been
frosty, and the chill air heavy with lowland vapours.
Towards morning the whole country became enveloped
in a dense fog, ruinous to the success of a combined
attack made by several converging columns upon our
skilfully embattled, and admirably disciplined, army.
^ The places mentioned in this chapter are indicated in the map at the
end of the volume.
VOL. IV. R
242 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Sullivan's people speedily came into collision with the
Royal light infantry ; killed their sentries ; surprised
their picket ; and drove the whole battalion, strenuously
resisting, a full mile to the rearward. There the re-
treating companies fell into line with the Fortieth Regi-
ment, which was drawn up behind the fence of a
spacious orchard where Colonel Musgrave had pitched
his camp. Their volleys, delivered coolly and with
visible effect, stopped the first rush of the Republican
onset. An obstinate contest ensued, in which the com-
batants, — who never saw forty yards, and very seldom
more than twenty yards, in front of them, — made shift
to aim at the flashes of the musketry opposite. On the
side of the Americans there was superiority of numbers,
and no lack of courage ; and, in something less than
twenty minutes, as men reckon time in battle, the British
line gave way. While they were retiring from the con-
flict our soldiers encountered the wrathful presence of
Sir William Howe, who had hurried to the front, and
who now found himself nearer than he anticipated, but
not nearer than he liked, to the hostile muzzles. ** For
shame. Light Infantry ! " he cried ; '' I never saw you
retreat before. Form ! Form ! It is only a scouting-
party." At this moment, to the intense satisfaction of
those veterans whom the general was rebuking, the
head of an American column loomed through the mist,
and several pieces of cannon opened fire upon the
group of horsemen who were standing with Sir William
Howe under a large chestnut-tree. "' I never," said an
officer of the Fifty-second Regiment, " saw people enjoy
a discharge of grape before ; but we all felt pleased to
hear the grape rattle about the Commander-in-Chief's
ears after he had accused the battalion of having run
away from a scouting-party." ^
A portion of the Fortieth Regiment went off in
safety; but Colonel Musgrave, with six weak com-
panies, was entirely surrounded by the enemy. In the
^ Letter quoted in the History of the Fifty-second British Regiment
by General Hunter.
GERMANTO IVN 243
course of the Revolutionary War two of King George's
armies, finding themselves in a hopeless strategical
position, were reduced to capitulate after they had done
everything which honour and patriotism could demand ;
but to surrender during the heat of an engagement,
while his soldiers had any ammunition left in their
pouches, was an idea which, at that period of our
military history, was almost inconceivable to a British
regimental officer. Musgrave, with infinite difficulty,
got his men inside the Chief Justice's house. He
posted some of them in the rooms below, with orders
to bar the doors and shutters, and bayonet everyone
who should attempt to enter ; while the rest were
stationed, with their guns loaded, at the windows of
the two upper stories. A young Virginian lieutenant,
preceded by a drummer beating a parley, summoned
the garrison to lay down their arms. The poor lad
approached waving a white handkerchief. In such a
state of the atmosphere, however, one colour looked the
same as another, and the messenger of peace was shot
dead. Three American cannon were immediately run
forward, and blew in the hall-door at the first dis-
charge ; but the English captain who commanded on
the ground-floor, and who had barricaded the entry
with a pile of furniture, sent up word to Musgrave that
the soldiers above stairs might ply their muskets in full
assurance that their comrades below stairs would do
their duty.
The Republicans advanced to the attack with spirit
and resolution. One officer had his horse killed
under him within three yards of the house. Another,
who got close beneath the wall with an armful of
straw and a lighted torch, was mortally wounded by
a shot fired upwards through the cellar-grating. The
Chevalier de Plessis clambered over the sill of a
window, and found himself, alone and unsupported, in
the presence of a group of redcoats from whom he was
glad to escape alive. He was the only man among the
assailants who, on that day, saw the inside of the Chew
k2
244 '^^^ AMERICAN REVOLUTION
mansion. Colonel John Laurens, with fruitless daring,
led a storming-party of New Jerseymen against the
principal entrance. The marble statues and vases,
which ornamented the Chief Justice's lawn, were
chipped and starred by the EngHsh bullets ; but
nothing made of flesh and blood could remain erect on
that bare plot of turf, and under that deadly shower.
Washington would, from the very first, have done well
to have neglected Musgrave, and continued his forward
movement in the direction of Philadelphia. By this
time a large portion of his army had got completely
out of hand. The American infantry and artillery
made a circle about the building, and scourged it with
a tempest of round-shot, grape, and musketry. The
roof was pierced, and all the glass and woodwork
shattered ; but General Knox's three-pounders could
make no impression whatever upon the well-laid brick
walls and the massive stone copings. The bombard-
ment had, in one important respect, a decisive influence
upon the result of the battle ; for the roar of the guns
exerted a fatal attraction over those American generals
and colonels who were painfully and blindly groping
their passage through the fog. Battalions, brigades,
and in one case a whole division, came blundering up
from right, and left, and rear ; firing in the direction of
the foe, and sometimes into the backs of their own
friends ; increasing the confusion, and perpetually add-
ing to the .noise. Before very long three thousand
Republicans were clustered and intermingled around
the British stronghold ; and Musgrave's seven score
musketeers, like the Guardsmen at Hougomont, per-
formed the inestimable service of detaining and para-
lysing, through the critical hours of a disputed day,
a hostile force enormously out of proportion to their
own scanty numbers.
Washington had no strength to spare ; for the most
difficult part of his work was still before him. No
fewer than five brigades of Royal infantry, with plenty
of cannon, were drawn up behind a long and narrow
GERMANTO WN 24 5
lane which crossed the village street at right angles
a mile farther down the road to Philadelphia. The
whole centre of the American army was now a whirl-
pool of confusion, which drew into its vortex every-
thing that came near it ; but the troops on Greene's
extreme left, and Wayne's division, which closed the
line on Sullivan's right, pushed vigorously forward,
and were very soon in contact with the enemy. The
Repubhcans were successful at first ; but after a while
the tide of battle turned. Sullivan's people lost heart
on a sudden ; and they were not without their excuses.
They had travelled through the night. They had been
fighting hard for nearly three hours. They had fired
away their ammunition. Their flank was unprotected.
Their reserves stopped behind to help, or to hinder, the
attack upon Musgrave's garrison ; and the English
brigade immediately opposite to them was commanded
by General Charles Grey, who, — as Wayne now for
the second time experienced, — was a very awkward
man to run up against in the dark. The roar of
the American batteries around the Chew mansion told
upon the nerves of Sullivan's exhausted soldiers. A
rumour arose, and spread, that they were being assailed
in the rear by a hostile force ; and, to the surprise of
the officers who commanded them, they broke their
ranks, and retired from the field in hurry and disarray.
The defeat and disappearance of the American
right wing placed General Greene in a situation of
extreme jeopardy. He was hotly engaged to the east
of the village, where he drove back the troops whom
he first encountered, and took from them more prisoners
than he had the means of guarding. All his men
were now inside the British lines, fifteen hundred paces
ahead of the nearest body of their fellow-countrymen,
and mixed up with their adversaries in close and
deadly strife. Nothing could avert their capture or
destruction unless their general, by a miracle of energy,
contrived to extricate them from the battle and the
mist. Greene, if he had time to think, must have
246 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
regarded the task as well nigh hopeless. His scope
of vision was limited to the length of a pistol-shot;
his aides-de-camp, on their jaded steeds, could not
leap the garden walls, and orchard-fences, by which
the outskirts of Germantown were everywhere inter-
sected ; and he was within a few minutes of having
the whole British army upon his hands. Charles
Grey, with the promptitude of a good soldier, got
his three battalions firmly into grasp ; changed front
to the right ; and, flanked or followed by the rest of
Howe's left wing, swept down upon the houses and
the enclosures amidst which the Americans were posted.
Lord Cornwallis had been left in care of Philadelphia,
within hearing of the cannon. His practised ear soon
informed him that this was no mere affair of out-
posts ; and he set out for Germantown with three
battalions of English and Hessian grenadiers. They
started at a run ; they kept it up for most of the way;
and, before the crisis arrived, they were already
near the spot. The British infantry in Greene's front,
who had given ground reluctantly, and sold it dearly,
rallied once more to the charge, and stormed fiercely
in. There was no flinching on either part. The
American bullets flew straight, and the Tower bayonets
were actively at work. An English general of brigade,
and two English colonels, were struck down with
mortal wounds.^ The Ninth Continental Regiment,
familiarly known as "the Tall Virginians," was sur-
rounded and taken ; but not until the devoted battal-
ion had been reduced by shot and steel to the strength
of a single company. Nathanael Greene, during that
terrible half-hour, set an example of cool and homely
valour which, for long afterwards, was the talk of the
American camp-fires. One of his field-pieces had been
dismounted, and might have been abandoned without
^ The Fifth Regiment lost their colonel at Germantown. Captain
Harris succeeded to the command, and soon afterwards, in a fight
aejainst the French, he made a very great name both for himself and for
his regiment.
GERMANTOWN 247
dishonour ; but Greene had handled heavier masses of
iron in his father's anchor-yard ; and he soon got the
cannon Hfted on to a waggon, and carted to the rear.
When, later in the retreat, there was an alarm of
cavalry, and the less resolute men slunk off into the
fog, the General ordered what remained of the escort to
join hands, and step along in line behind the guns; and
so the straggling ceased, and the whole of his artillery
was drawn away in safety.
When the fugitives from Sullivan's regiments
streamed past the place where Washington was
stationed, replying to his questions and expostulations
by pointing at their empty cartridge-boxes, the Ameri-
can commander at once recognised that the fortune
of war had definitely gone against him. Without a
moment's hesitation he began his arrangements for
retreat, and did not call a halt until his troops were
once more back in the distant quarters from which
they had issued at the same hour on the preceding
evening. The skill of his dispositions was respectfully
admired by those officers in the van of the pursuing
army who had any knowledge of tactics ; and his Con-
tinental infantry showed so firm a countenance that the
British dragoons refrained from charging. General
Howe followed up his success languidly, and inflicted
little or no damage upon the departing enemy. It was
alleged in defence that his soldiers were very tired ;
but they must have been fresh in comparison to the
Americans, who had been marching all the previous
night while the English were sound asleep.^ The
period which intervened between ten in the morning
and dusk, on the fourth of October 1777, was for Sir
^ Lieutenant James MacMichael, of the Pennsylvanian Line, noted in
his diary that he got back to the camp on Skippack Creek at nine in the
evening. " I had," he wrote, " previously undergone many fatigues, but
never any that had so much overdone me as this. Had it not been for
the fear of being taken prisoner, I should have remained on the road all
night. I had marched in twenty-four hours forty-five miles, and in that
time fcjught four hours, during which we advanced so furiously through
buckwheat fields that it was almost unspeakable fatigue."
248 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
William Howe a lost, — and, as fate willed it, a last, —
opportunity. Washington saved all his cannon. Four
hundred of his people had been taken prisoners, and
six hundred killed or wounded. Fifty-three Americans
lay dead on the lawn in front of the Chew mansion,
and four across the door-steps ; and the very great
number of their officers who perished sword in hand in the
course of those few hours was a remarkable testimony
to the discriminating vigour with which the commis-
sioned ranks of Washington's New Model army had
been purged of all baser elements. Our troops had
suffered almost as heavily as their opponents ; and for
weeks to come there were melancholy scenes in the
churchyard of the village, and in the upper chambers
of its pleasant and hospitable homes. The humanity
of the victors, — which was sure to be the case where a
Howe was in command, — manifested itself equally and
impartially towards friends and foes ; and the surgeons
of the Medical College in Philadelphia were encouraged
to exercise their then unsurpassed science and dexterity
on behalf of the wounded men of both armies.^ During
that fierce struggle between kinsmen, the old fraternal
feeling was not extinct in many gallant hearts. On the
hundred and twenty-sixth anniversary of the battle
the remains of two English officers of rank were re-
interred, at the cost of our own Government, near the
spot where they had fallen ; but those brave men had
already rested peaceably for many years beneath a
very brief and simple, — and, for that reason, perfect, —
epitaph which had been placed on their gravestone by
the native inhabitants of Germantown.^
1 " I went to see Doctor Foulke amputate an American soldier's leg,
which he completed in twenty minutes, while the physician at the Mili-
tary Hospital was forty minutes performing an operation of the same
nature." Diary of Robert Morton ; kept in Philadelphia while that City
was occupied by the British Army.
2 " No more at War.
General Agnew and Colonel Bird :
British officers,
Wounded at the Battle of Germantown."
GERMANTOWN 249
Washington, cruelly disappointed, complained in
a private letter to his brother that his own troops, when
they were just on the point of obtaining a decisive
triumph, had taken fright, and fled with precipitation
and disorder. But Germantown, none the less, was
of great and enduring service to the American cause.
That the battle had been fought unsuccessfully was of
small importance when weighed against the fact that it
had been fought at all. Eminent generals, and states-
men of sagacity, in every European Court were profoundly
impressed by learning that a new army, raised within
the year, and undaunted by a series of recent disasters,
had assailed a victorious enemy in his own quarters, and
had only been repulsed after a sharp and dubious con-
flict. An historian of note has truly said that the French
Government, in making up its mind on the question
whether the Americans would prove to be efficient allies,
was influenced almost as much by the battle of German-
town as by the surrender of Burgoyne.^ Frederic the
Great had at first regarded the capture of Philadelphia
by Sir William Howe as equivalent to the suppression of
the rebellion.^ He himself, in the course of the Seven
Years' War, had twice seen Berlin in the occupation of
an invading foe, without slackening his efforts, or sur-
rendering himself to discouragement and despair ; but
he could not be expected to believe, without proof given,
that the American general, and the American nation,
possessed tenacity as indomitable, and energy as un-
quenchable, as his own. When, however, the news of
Germantown reached Potsdam, the Prussian King, with a
flash of insight which revealed to him the military and
political situation beyond the Atlantic, pronounced that
such a people, under such a leader, would survive even
greater trials and mischances than the temporary loss
of their capital city.
Congress, in manly terms, voted their thanks to
General Washington and his soldiers : acknowledging
^ Fiske's American /\ evolution ; Chapter 7.
2 Le Roi Frederic a Monsieur cle Goltz ; Potsdam, 13 Novembre, 1777.
2 50 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
that the best designs, and the boldest efforts, might
sometimes fail by unforeseen accidents ; and expressing
an earnest belief that the valour and virtue of the
army would thereafter, by the blessing of Heaven,
be crowned with deserved success.^ That belief most
undoubtedly was held by the army itself. Anthony
Wayne, who had been defeated three times in as
many weeks, — and who, on this third occasion, had
been bruised by a cannon-ball, grazed by a bullet, and
rolled on the ground under his dying horse within a
few paces of the English bayonets, — assured his wife
that he had had a glorious day at Germantown, and
that his men were in the highest spirits, looking for-
ward eagerly to another battle. Those irrepressible, if
not altogether invincible, warriors banished from their
memories the calamitous issue, and dwelt with just
pride upon the honourable incidents, of the combat.^
Nor were these sentiments confined to their own breasts.
An increased respect for the prowess of American
soldiers, and for the enterprise of American generals,
prevailed among the adversaries with whom they had
been contending; and the battle of Germantown affords
a striking instance of the advantage which, in the long
run, almost invariably rewards the strategist who com-
bats evil fortune by assuming a vigorous offensive.
From that day forward, during all the remaining years
"^Journals of Congress ; October 8th, 1777.
2 " This action convinced our people that, when they attacked, they
can confuse and rout the flower of the British Army." Israel Putnam to
Governor Trumbull ; Fishkill, October 15, 1777.
There was something almost comic in the persuasion of the individual
American soldier that he, and his own regiment, would have done
wonders at Germantown, if others had not failed in their duty. That
view is recorded by an honest Pennsylvanian subaltern in a passage of not
very Homeric verse.
" I then said, I had seen another battle o'er,
And it had exceeded all I ever saw before.
Yet through the danger I escaped without receiving harm,
And providentially got safe through firing that was warm.
But to my grief, though I fought sore, yet we had to retreat
Because the cowardice of those on our left was great."
THE CONTEST FOR THE DELAWARE 2$ I
of the protracted war, Washington, and the army which
he personally commanded, were never again seriously
attacked by the enemy.
A couple of months after the battle of Germantown
Horace Walpole informed a correspondent that tidings
of two victories had arrived in London, and that the
King had been *' restored to the sovereignty of Phila-
delphia." Even that modest estimate was as yet beyond
the mark. Sir WilHam Howe was inside the city,
and Washington had failed to turn him out of it by
force ; but a great deal had still to be done before the
Royal general could hold his conquest in perpetuity.
What with soldiers, teamsters, and camp followers, he
had brought in his train more than twenty thousand
mouths which would have to be abundantly and regu-
larly filled if his army was to continue efficient ;
and he found in Philadelphia at least as many private
persons of all ages, and both sexes, who could not
be allowed to starve. The town had not been vic-
tualled for a siege. Like other centres of commerce
and manufacture it had been fed, from week to week,
and from day to day, by an automatic and complicated
machinery which ran smoothly and silently in time of
peace, but which broke down when the neighbourhood
was infested by contending armies. It is true that
Pennsylvanian agriculturists, who as a class had little
love for the Revolution, would in most cases have
been glad enough to sell their produce to the English
Commissariat officers at war prices ; and, where the
American farmers refused to trade, the Hessian foragers
would have been very ready to take. But Washington
had planted himself, close at hand, on Pennsylvanian
soil. His main army was so judiciously posted, and
his detached parties showed themselves so active and
ubiquitous, that the British at Philadelphia were de-
barred from the resources of the fertile region west
of the Delaware, and were reduced to draw their
252 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
rations from the Government magazines in New York
city. Their only Une of supply by land was on the
east side of the river, across the northern districts of
New Jersey; and the conduct of George the Third's
foreign mercenaries, during the previous December, had
changed the Jerseymen from half-hearted Loyalists,
or very mild Whigs, into something which resembled a
community of guerillas. They were guerillas of an Anglo-
Saxon type, — not cruel or ferocious, but so vigilant
and indefatigable, and so smart and handy in their
operations, that it would be necessary for Sir William
Howe to employ half his army in protecting his com-
munications, if his provision-waggons were to pass,
unburned and unplundered, over the hundred miles
of highway which lay between the Bay of New York
and the town of Philadelphia. It was already evi-
dent that the British soldiers, and the civil population
amidst which they were quartered, would have to be
fed by water-carriage ; and the passage down the Dela-
ware, from the city to the open sea, had long ago
been providently, industriously, and on the whole not
unskilfully, blocked by the exertions of the Republican
authorities.
For a considerable distance south of Philadelphia
the river was thickly studded with islands, great and
small ; and it was easy for the American engineers to
obstruct navigation by those elaborate barriers which it
pleased their fancy to entitle chevaitx de frise, and by
the more effective impediment of forts and batteries.
Twelve miles down-stream the main channel was filled
with "transverse beams, firmly united, pointing in va-
rious directions, and strongly headed with iron ; " ^
and this portentous conglomeration of wood and metal
was flanked by the guns of a large intrenchment,
erected upon a bluff overlooking the town of Bilhngs-
port on the eastern shore of the Delaware. On a low
island, a few miles farther up the river, stood a group
* ** History of Europe " in the Annual Register for 1 777 ; Chapter 7.
THE CONTEST FOR THE DELAWARE 253
of block-houses enclosed in a parapet, and dignified by
the name of Fort Mifflin ; immediately opposite, at Red
Bank on the Jersey shore, was a well-placed and care-
fully planned redoubt called after General Mercer, the
Virginian who had been killed at Princeton ; and the
course of the current, between and below the two
fortresses, had been barricaded by an invisible frame-
work of sunken timber and scuttled barges. In ad-
dition to the stationary batteries, and to these hidden
dangers which lurked beneath the waters, there was
a fine frigate named the Delaware, and a numerous
flotilla of schooners, fire-ships, floating batteries, galleys,
gondolas, and xebecques. The vessels were classed
under fantastic designations, and christened after a
variety of ancient and contemporary naval heroes ;
but they were badly manned and worse commanded.
Among their crews were many landsmen, who had been
exempted even from the training which, as time went
on, might have converted them into sailors. The
streets of Philadelphia had been placarded during the
preceding winter by a recruiting notice of unique and
unprecedented character. Gentlemen who desired to
assist their country in the struggle for liberty, but who
might not choose to be far removed from their parents
or family, were invited to evince their patriotism, " and
at the same time to gratify their tender feelings," by
entering themselves for service in the New Floating
Battery. On board this comfortable and well-protected
hulk, — which, (so the Government promised,) should
never be stationed more than seven miles away from their
native city, — those of them who were handicraftsmen
might pursue their arts in peace, while they enjoyed a
stipend of fifty shillings a month, together with an allow-
ance of ten pounds of meat a week, and a pint of rum
every two days. The advertisement bore signs of hav-
ing been drawn up either by Benjamin Franklin before
he sailed for France, or by some constant reader of the
Gazette, and the Almanac, who had caught Franklin's
style; but the sort of mariners whom such a prospectus
254 ^-^^ AMERICAN REVOLUTION
would attract were not very likely to hold their own in
the day of battle against an equal number of Lord
Howe's able seamen.^
The situation was embarrassing ; but Sir William
Howe had already begun to deal with it. On the even-
ing of the day that our army took possession of Phila-
delphia Lord Cornwallis planted three batteries of heavy
cannon along the river front of the city. Early next
morning the larger American vessels anchored off the
wharf at a respectful distance, and commenced bombard-
ing ; but the British howitzers replied, and had much
the best of the controversy. The Delaware frigate was
deplorably handled in the action ; and it soon became
evident that her officers had not so much as acquainted
themselves with the soundings of the river after which
their ship was called. When the tide fell she was left
aground. She was abandoned by her consorts. She
caught fire in two places. Her captain meekly complied
with a summons to come on shore as a prisoner. Her
crew escaped in the boats ; and their vacant places were
taken by a boarding-party of Royal Marines, who extin-
guished the flames, and got her broad-sides once more
into working order. The British army, unaided by a
single man-of-war, had inflicted upon the Republican
squadron a blow from the moral effect of which it never
recovered. Five days afterwards a detachment of Howe's
infantry took possession of Billingsport, and the English
frigates from below the barrier cleared a passage through
the chevatcx de frise. The American flotilla made a
1 " Those who are thus inclined to serve themselves, their country,
and posterity, let them repair to the Sign of the Two Tuns, opposite the
New Market, where they shall have a month's pay in advance, and a
dollar, or a dollar's worth of drink, to drown sorrow, and drive away
care. The battery is well constructed for the preservation and accom-
modation of her men. Any industrious tradesman, whose business is
of a sedentary nature, may here have his house-rent, firing, victuals,
and drink, free; besides his pay, and a great deal of time in which he
may employ himself for the emolument of his family, (should he have
one,) or fill his pockets for his own amusement." Annrican Archives
for October 1776.
THE CONTEST FOR THE DELAWARE 2^1
show of interrupting the operation. But the Andrea
Doria and the Benedict Arnold, opening fire at long
range, and desisting as soon as the British advanced
towards closer quarters, behaved in a manner very un-
worthy of their names ; whilst disheartenment, in the
case of more than one ship's-company, did not stop short
of defection from the Republican cause. Washington,
in sad and stately phrases, lamented that the officers and
seamen on board the galleys had manifested a disposi-
tion which reflected little honour upon their courage
and fidelity. Two complete crews, (he said,) had actually
deserted to the adversary.
It was a sorry, but by many centuries not a new,
story. Among a people engaged in a wrestle for national
existence, — and making head against unaccustomed
dangers by means of raw levies and improvised military
appliances, — panic and indiscipline have, in all ages,
alternated with world-renowned manifestations of valour
and devotion. Nor can it be denied that the high
character of American patriotism was handsomely vindi-
cated before the contest for the Delaware had been
brought to a conclusion. When, on the thirteenth
September lyyy, the news of victory on the Brandywine
reached Lord Howe's flag-ship in the Elk River, the
British admiral took instant measures for transferring
his powerful fleet, and his vast convoy, to those distant
waters where the fate of the campaign was now about
to be decided. He retraced the whole of his long and
useless voyage, making his way down the estuary of
the Chesapeake at the rate of five leagues in the twenty-
four hours, and then tacking, slowly and painfully, up
the stretch of sea-coast which extended from the Capes
of Virginia to the entrance of Delaware Bay. The winds
were adverse and tempestuous; but, by dint of sturdy
seamanship, Lord Howe's leading division came to
anchor off the town of Chester, just fifteen miles below
Philadelphia, on the fourth day of October. Another
week elapsed before the rest, but not quite all the rest,
of his storm-tossed vessels straggled home into smooth
256 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
water from their conflict with the Atlantic Ocean.^ The
British fleet and the British army were now once more
in touch ; and the brothers Howe, after no undue delay,
contrived their plan for a conjoint attack upon the
formidable stronghold of Fort Mercer. The Admiral
undertook to distract and annoy the garrison by cannon-
ading the river-face of the American defences, while in
the landward quarter an assault was to be pushed home
by an officer who petitioned for that arduous employ-
ment as a personal favour to himself. Ever since the
disaster of Trenton, Colonel Von Donop had been urgent
for an opportunity to re-establish the military credit of
his German comrades ; and Sir William Howe, who loved
a man of spirit, willingly acceded to his request. Von
Donop took with him three battalions of Grenadiers,
and a very strong regiment of ordinary infantry ; Hes-
sians all, two thousand bayonets by count.^ They were
ferried across from Philadelphia on the twenty-first
October, and halted at night in the village of Haddon-
field on the Jersey shore, ten miles north-west of the
fortress which they were to assail on the morrow.
The place was held by three hundred infantry from
Rhode Island, trained in Nathanael Greene's methods;
animated by his spirit ; and commanded by his kins-
man and military pupil, — an officer whose reputation
has been established, beyond the possibility of detrac-
tion, by the events of a single afternoon. Colonel
Christopher Greene had come to the conclusion that the
circuit of the works was too extensive to be properly
manned by his handful of musketeers. Advised and
assisted by the Chevalier Mauduit de Plessis, — a young
^ A fine transport, which Lord Howe had re-named ** The Father's
Good Will" with the idea of re-assuring and conciliating King George's
misguided subjects, foundered and sank under stress of weather. It was
a sinister, and all too veracious, omen.
'^ On the rolls of the army which embarked at New York in July 1777
the three Grenadier battalions averaged four hundred and thirty bayonets
apiece ; the Mirbach Regiment numbered more than seven hundred rank
and file ; and each company of chasseurs must have had a strength of ?'■
least fifty rifles.
THE CONTEST FOR THE DELAWARE 2$y
Frenchman of family who had volunteered to serve in
Fort Mercer, and who there united in his own person
the functions of Chief Engineer and Commandant of
Artillery, — he abandoned and dismantled the outer line
of defences, and bestowed all his attention on a small
pentagonal redoubt which occupied the centre of the
position. The ditch surrounding this little citadel had
in front of it a barricade of felled trees w^ith interwoven
branches ; while behind it was a bank of earth, ten feet
high, and faced with planking. Late in the evening of
the twenty-first October a detachment of Pennsylvanian
militia, equal in number to the whole of Christopher
Greene's troops, looked in on their way to Fort Mifflin,
whither they had been despatched by General Washing-
ton as a reinforcement for the garrison stationed on the
island. Their colonel earnestly begged that he and his
people might be permitted to cast in their lot with the
defenders of Fort Mercer ; but, after sleeping on the
question, Christopher Greene declined to interfere with
the plans of the Commander-in-Chief, and sent the
Pennsylvanians off to their destination at break of day.
About four o'clock in the afternoon the enemy came
in sight, and took up their alignment in front of the
woods, a quarter of a mile to the northward. Two of
Von Donop's staff officers advanced as near the fortifica-
tions as they were allowed to approach ; summoned
the King of England's rebellious subjects to lay down
their arms ; and warned them that, " if they stood the
battle, no quarter whatever would be given." The
Americans listened to the message with surprise and
indignation. For the war had hitherto been conducted,
as between EngHshmen, with reasonable humanity,
and not infrequent displays of rough but genuine
good nature ; and the Rhode Island farmers did not
relish this taste of bloodthirsty rhetoric inspired by
the worst military traditions of Continental Europe.
To the imagination of a quiet-mannered people the
very gestures of Von Donop's envoys seemed insolent,
and their countenances cruel and haughty. As soon
VOL. IV. s
258 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
as the parley was at an end Von Donop assembled
his colonels, and addressed them in stirring language.
In obedience to his own example they all dismounted,
unsheathed their swords, and placed themselves in front
of their respective battaUons ; while the Hessian Grena-
diers cheered like mad, and called out that Fort Mercer
should soon be re-named " Fort Donop." Christopher
Greene, who had been watching the foe through a
spy-glass from the summit of the parapet, descended
from his post of observation, and walked down the
line with one last word of counsel to each of his
followers. '* Fire low, my men ; " he said. ** They
have a broad belt just above the hips. That is where
you must aim."
Historians have reported, or invented, longer speeches
made on the eve of battle by more renowned generals ;
but the American leader had said exactly what the
occasion needed. Over and above the intrinsic import-
ance of the advice, he had given his soldiers, at the
critical moment of the fight, something else to think
about besides their own personal danger. At a quarter
before five in the evening the Hessian artillery began
to play ; and their infantry came on like a broad torrent,
three regiments in front, and the fourth in reserve. They
rushed over the exterior breastworks, which were bare
of men, in full belief that the terror of their charge had
sent the garrison flying to the rear ; and, without wait-
ing to look around them, they advanced at a run upon
the inner fort, — still in good order, (for they were drilled
to perfection,) waving their hats, and shouting victory.
In another minute they were entangled among the im-
pediments which obstructed the glacis ; and then at
last the New England muskets spoke. It may well be
doubted whether so few men, in so small a space of
time, had ever delivered a deadlier fire. Three German
colonels went down, and a score of other officers ; and
their soldiers fell in heaps. The boldest of them pushed
their way across the ditch ; but they had no scaling-
ladders ; and, encumbered by huge knapsacks and
THE CONTEST FOR THE DELAWARE 259
ponderous trappings, they tried in vain to shoulder
each other up and over the smooth wall. The Re-
publican galleys, — propelled by oars, and drawing
little water, — stood close in shore, and enfiladed the
right wing of the assailants with grape and round-shot
at very short ranges. In forty minutes all was over.
The Hessians retired from the contest, pursued by rifle-
balls up to the verge of the forest, and then marched
continuously through the night until they once more
reached their ferry on the eastern bank of the Delaware
River.
The mortal character of the injuries inflicted bore
witness to the accuracy with which Americans could
shoot from behind cover. So far as the war north of
the Potomac was concerned, it was a lesson that never
required repeating. A hundred and twenty-seven
Hessians lay dead in the trenches. The retreating
column was accompanied by all the wounded who could
bear to be carried, or helped along, by their comrades ;
and twenty-two of these poor fellows were buried by
the road-side on the way back to Philadelphia. Sixty
more were left on the ground disabled. Colonel Greene
did his very utmost to preserve their lives. He had,
however, few medicines, and no wholesome food what-
ever, to give them ; and forty died in the course of the
next month. Hundreds of homes were left desolate in
Germany ; but it was money in the Landgrave's pocket,
inasmuch as he had stipulated for an extra payment of
thirty crowns from the British Treasury for every one
of his subjects who might be killed in action. Although
the loss of the Americans had been small, they were
too weak in number to venture upon liberties with the
enemy, and they did not sally from the works until he
had taken his final departure from their neighbourhood.
Then they picked up three hundred excellent muskets,
and captured a score of Hessians who had been waiting
patiently between the ditch and the wall in preference
to running the gauntlet of the bullets in an attempt to
escape across the open. Colonel Von Donopwas found,
82
26o THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
with his thigh shattered, lying amidst the thick of the
slain. He was treated, at Washington's particular
instance, with all the respect and tenderness which his
rank and his reputation demanded ; but he only sur-
vived a week. A rude unsculptured stone marked his
grave. His monument was left blank from a difficulty
which both friends and foes acknowledged to be in-
superable. After the battle of Trenton a German sub-
altern had bethought himself of composing an epitaph
for poor Colonel Rail ; but he could not word it to his
satisfaction. And no wonder; for an inscription on
the tomb of the brave men who were sent to their
death in America by the Landgrave of Hesse was not
an easy epitaph to write.^
That day was disastrous to our arms on water and
on shore alike. Admiral Howe endeavoured to do his
part loyally ; and the sight of the cannon-smoke from
the American galleys, as they spread slaughter through
the ranks of our German auxiliaries, stimulated our
sailors to rashness, and even to recklessness. A British
ship of the line, and a cruiser carrying sixteen guns,
grounded in the shallows, caught fire, and perished by
the explosion of their magazines. The spirit of Sir
William Howe's army was depressed by these unforeseen
reverses ; and worse news still remained to be unfolded.
As far back as the eighteenth October, English officers
had been puzzled and worried by a concerted discharge
of artillery from all the American ships and batteries on
the Delaware River. Something had evidently happened
which pleased the adversary. Disagreeable rumours fil-
tered through the Royal outposts ; and, after the lapse of
a fortnight, certainty came. On the third day of Novem-
ber Sir William Hov/e announced to the army in a Gen-
eral Order that Burgoyne had capitulated at Saratoga.
Such an extraordinary delay in the transmission of
such important intelligence brought home to the appre-
hension of the British in Philadelphia a very painful
1 Simonides himself would have found it hard to turn a suitable couplet.
"Go, stranger, and tell our master, the Landgrave, that we lie here, obedi-
ent to his commands, having earned for him the price of a deer-park and
an opera-house."
THE CONTEST FOR THE DELAWARE 26 1
sense of their own isolation. The increasing scarcity
of provisions, fuel, and warm clothing had already
begun to teach them how completely they were cut off
from the outer world. The approach of a Pennsyl-
vanian winter was severely felt l3oth by man and beast.
The horses were in poor condition from cold weather,
exhausted pastures, and a total lack of imported forage.
The price of most articles essential to human existence
was flying up at an alarming rate. Salt fetched six-
teen shillings a bushel, and butter four shillings a pound.
Very poor fresh meat was sold by the ounce, and each
ounce cost twopence ; while wheat-flour could not be
purchased. These sums were reckoned in hard money ;
for the notes issued by Congress did not pass current
inside the city; but luxuries might be smuggled through
the lines by those who could afford to pay for them in
Continental paper on the scale of four hundred dollars
for a pound of green tea, and a thousand dollars for
half a hundred-weight of loaf sugar. The soldier had
a bad and insufficient ration ; and there was much
suffering among the townspeople. The Tories, who
were very miserable, had become sullen and dis-
contented ; while citizens who favoured the Revolution
were not so hungry as to refrain from feeling, and
even expressing, keen satisfaction over this unexpected
change in the military situation. Unless the provision-
ships from New York could freely ascend the river,
it would be impossible for Sir William Howe perma-
nently to hold the town ; and another month of semi-
starvation would reduce the British garrison, — for it
was already a garrison rather than a field-force, — to
a condition which would make it difficult for him even
to retreat with safety.^
The deliverance of our beleaguered countrymen from
1 Captain Montresor, Sir William Howe's Chief Engineer, made the fol-
lowing entry in his private notebook : " We are just now an army with-
out provisicns ; a rum artillery for Besieging; scarce any ammunition;
no clothing, nor any money. Somewhat dejected l)y IJurgoyne's capitula-
tion, and not elated with our late manrxjuvres, such as Donop's repulse^, and
the Augusta and Merlin being burnt; and, (to complete all,) blockaded."
262 THE AM ERIC Ar^ REVOLUTION
these impending dangers was destined to be wrought,
not by the hired valour of the foreigner, but by English
energy and pertinacity exerted on that element where
those national qualities have always been displayed to the
best advantage. Lord Howe entertained friendly senti-
ments towards the Americans, and was heartily grieved
that he ever had accepted a command against them
under a mistaken impression of the part which he was
commissioned by the Cabinet at home to play ; but
he had not the slightest intention of allowing them to
snap their fingers at the Royal Navy, to blockade a
British army, and to spoil his brother's campaign. Pre-
parations for the siege of Fort Mifflin had already been
commenced under circumstances of extreme difficulty.
That redoubt was erected on an accumulation of
vegetable soil washed down by the river, and compli-
mented with the name of '' Mud Island." It was
protected from naval attack on the southern quarter
by extensive tracts of alluvial deposit, of which nothing
could be seen at high water except the tops of the
reeds. On the western side a channel five hundred
yards broad, but so shallow and shifting as to be
accounted impassable for sailing-vessels, separated the
fortress from certain low islands which fringed the
Pennsylvanian shore. They were a mere net-work of
marshes, the paradise of the duck-shooter ; impervious
for wheel-carriages ; and rescued from inundation by
dykes, large portions of which the Americans had been
careful to destroy. On this unpromising scene of opera-
tions the British engineers had been working slowly,
and rather hopelessly ; but, after the repulse at Fort
Mercer, they applied themselves anew to their task with
the unsparing activity of people to whom time was very
precious, and money no object.^ Fatigue-parties of
two hundred soldiers ; large gangs of jovial sailors, glad
to find themselves on any description of land, wet or
dry, that went by the name of a shore; and skilled
^ Ever since November began, Lord Howe had been sending large
9uantities of guineas up the river in boats, for the use of the British army.
THE CONTEST FOR THE DELAWARE 263
workmen from the city paid at the rate of ten shillings
for the twenty-four hours, — were employed all day and
all night until the business was accomplished. The
breaches in the embankments were repaired, and care-
fully guarded against any future attempts at mischief.
Causeways were built across the swamp. Solid plat-
forms for cannon were constructed at the river's edge ;
and the batteries were armed with howitzers and large
mortars, and with a good store of thirty-two pounder
guns borrowed from the lower tiers of Lord Howe's
broadsides.
After three weeks of intense and continuous labour
all was ready ; and at dawn on the tenth November
the bombardment commenced. Thundering across an
interval of little more than two furlongs our artillery
speedily dominated the fire of Fort Mifflin, and wrecked
the whole enclosure. Blockhouses were reduced to
heaps of rubbish, palisades shivered into splinters, and
barracks so riddled by shot as to be entirely un-
inhabitable. Strong parties of American militia were
fetched over at night to repair damages, and sent back
again to the mainland before morning ; for none except
the best Continental regulars could be persuaded, or
bribed, to remain during the hours of daylight in
that place of torment.^ The garrison was maintained,
by constant reinforcements, at a strength of three
hundred men ; and in six days there occurred, within
the circuit of the island, two hundred and fifty, — or,
according to the British account, four hundred, —
casualties. Several principal officers fell in quick
succession ; and their places were supplied, without
1 Washington promised a hundred pounds to every soldier who would
join the garrison at Fort Mifflin, and see the siege out.
Chance has preserved a scrap of conversation which passed in Fort
Mifflin during the course of that week. Colonel Samuel Smith of Mary-
land, who was in command until his turn to be wounded came, noticed
that one of his staff officers did not hold his head steady when the cannon-
balls flew over it. " What are you dodging for, Sir ? " said the Colonel;
" the King of Prussia had thirty aides-de-camp killed in one day."
"Yes, Sir," (the young man replied ;) " but Colonel Smith hasn't so many
to lose."
264 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
regard to rotation or seniority, by volunteers who were
willing to undertake a most trying service, and to face
a horrible scene. The troops in the fort, who had
a notable infusion of Virginians amongst them, lay
ensconced behind the ruins with their muskets loaded,
waiting and praying for an assault by storm which
never came.
The British admiral, who was a judge of courage,
perceived that the garrison would yield to nothing
short of stronger measures, and more unusual modes
of warfare, than had hitherto been adopted ; and he
determined to deal with Fort Mifflin as if it were the
flag-ship of a French squadron. Refusing to give
credit on hearsay to the evil reputation of the channel
which skirted the Pennsylvanian shore, he ordered that
section of the river to be surveyed by competent naval
officers, and marked out with buoys. On the fifteenth
November he brought his battle-ships into action to
the south of Mud Island ; while two of his captains,
successfully threading the narrow and treacherous
western passage, approached Fort Mifflin on the north
until their yard-arms almost overhung the battlements,
and raked the unfortunate island fore and aft. The
Republican schooners and galleys, which might easily
have overwhelmed that pair of bold intruders upon
fenced and forbidden waters, held aloof from the
combat ; and the garrison, left to its own resources,
possessed no means of resistance whatsoever. Hand-
grenades were thrown into the fort from the tops of
the two British vessels ; and not a man could show
himself on the platforms of the American batteries
without being a mark for forty or fifty muskets. The
cross-fire of heavy ordnance from sea and land was
immense in volume, and appalling in effect. It was
calculated that, in the course of twenty minutes, a
thousand large projectiles came rushing in upon the
defenders. Their few remaining cannon were almost
immediately dismounted ; four fifths of their artillery-
men had by this time been struck down ; and no angle
THE CONTEST FOR THE DELAWARE 265
of wall, or bank of earth, could afford them protection
against the storm of missiles which swept across their
islet from every quarter of the compass. The survivors,
who dreaded nothing so much as the loss of their
personal liberty, endured till nightfall ; and then, under
veil of the darkness, they retired very deliberately
across the eastern branch of the Delaware River,
carrying with them their remnant of stores, and their
large cargo of wounded. They made over to Lord
Howe the blood-stained ruins, and the shattered can-
non, as his prize of victory ; having borne themselves
like worthy antagonists of as fine a seaman as ever
paced a British quarter-deck.^
Our admiral had wrenched the key of the Delaware
from his adversary's grasp ; and the door was soon
flung wide open. On the nineteenth November Lord
Cornwallis approached Fort Mercer at the head of ten
battalions ; and the Republicans, knowing him for a
man who was not disposed to trifle, evacuated the place,
and so spared him the trouble of a siege, or the hazard
of an escalade. The score and a half vessels of the
American flotilla lay in the stream beneath the fort,
moored in a snug berth, and very little the worse for
wear. Their captains had never ventured within point-
blank range of a hostile man-of-war ; their masts and
spars were still intact ; and they had lost fewer than
forty killed and wounded in a naval campaign which
had already continued more than forty days. But
their hour had now come. The rowing-galleys escaped
against the current to Burlington; but the sailing-ships
did not care to face our batteries at Philadelphia, and
were mortally afraid of the Delaware frigate, which
had behaved to perfection ever since it was transferred
^ Captain Mahan appears to regard the behaviour of the garrison at
Fort Mifflin as a presage and a forewarning that their country would never
be subdued. "That same night," he writes, "the Americans abandoned
Fort Mifflin. Their loss, (Beatson says,) amounted to nearly four hundred
killed and wounded ; that of the British to forty-three. If this be correct,
it should have established the invincibility of men who, under such pro-
digious disparity of suffering, could maintain their position so tenaciously."
266 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
to British hands. At four in the morning of the twenty-
first November the American crews set themselves
ashore on New Jersey, after putting fire to their own
vessels. Sloops, brigs, and floating batteries, seventeen
in all, drifted up-stream past the crowded wharves of
the Pennsylvanian capital, with their rigging and sails
blazing sky-high, their cannon going off as fast as the
flames reached them, and their magazines exploding.
Two hours afterwards the ebb-tide brought back again
into view those of them which had not as yet been sunk
or stranded; and the citizens of Philadelphia saw all
that was to be seen of a pyrotechnic display for which
they had paid a very full price, inasmuch as the
Delaware fleet had stood the Republican taxpayer in
half a milHon of pounds sterling. While one brother was
gaining the mastery on the water, the other had been
engaged in making the possession of his new conquest
secure by land. A chain of fourteen redoubts, con-
nected by a strong stockade, now covered a space of
two and a half miles, extending from the Upper Ferry
on the Schuylkill River to a point on the western shore
of the Delaware above the town ; and the Royal troops
were disposed along this line of fortification with the
skill and particularity which Sir William Howe always
applied to the arrangement of military details. Before
the winter set in, the river had become a free and
uninterrupted highway for British traffic ; while all the
avenues leading into Philadelphia from the westward
were inexorably closed to Washington.
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE BRITISH IN PHILADELPHIA. VALLEY FORGE. THE
WINTER OF DISCONTENT
For six whole months to come the war stood still. Sir
William Howe abode in peace and comfort at Philadel-
phia ; while Washington, in his cheerless quarters out-
side the city, found that he had more than enough to
do in preserving his soldiers alive. But that half-year,
during which all military operations of any consequence
were entirely suspended, was marked by a series of
occurrences and proceedings, — in both camps, in both
countries, and on the Continent of Europe, — which
had a potent influence upon the final issue of the
American Revolution.
During the period that elapsed between the begin-
ning of December 1777, and the middle of June 1778,
the question whether Great Britain could conciliate,
pacify, and permanently and smoothly govern America,
was tried out in a limited and securely protected
locality, under every condition which could be ex-
pected to ensure success. The eastern districts of
Pennsylvania were a region signally favoured by
nature, where agricultural industry was intelHgently
pursued, and lavishly remunerated, without any irksome
demand for excessive labour or over-anxious parsi-
mony. " I bless God," wrote a farmer who sailed from
Greenock in 1771, ''that I came here; and I heartily
thank every man who encouraged me, and helped me
to get the better of that fear which a man is under
when he is to venture on so wide a sea." Two years
after his arrival this good Scotchman was settled in a
capacious house, standing on four hundred acres of his
267
268 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
own land, which he and his sons had cleared. In Ren-
frew and Lanark, (he said,) they always used to think
it a great thing for the lairds that they possessed
orchards ; and now he himself had planted two hundred
fruit-trees, and was already gathering apples ; while
cucumbers, pumpkins, and melons grew profusely in
the open fields. His crops were heavy ; and his flock
and herd, and still more his drove of swine, increased
fast. Good food was everywhere abundant ; and yet,
though the consumer had high times, the producer
found no cause for complaint or despondency. *' This,"
(so the writer went on to say,) " is the best poor man's
country in the world ; for the price of provision is
cheap, and the price of labour is dear. But this
country is chiefly profitable to those farmers who bring
along with them one, two, or three hundred pounds.
Such farmers can afford to eat good pork, beef, or
mutton as often as those who pay one, two, or three
hundred pounds of yearly rent in Scotland." ^ East
Pennsylvania was full of the right sort of emigrants,
who came to stay, who were not sparing of their own
personal labour, and who did their full duty by the
land which afforded them a comfortable home, — and, in
the case of many German refugees, a much-needed
asylum. The Dutch farmers, (we are told,) employed
between eight and nine thousand waggons in bringing
their produce to Philadelphia. " As they gathered in
hundreds along Market Street, with their six and eight
mammoth horses, surmounted by bells, they presented
a scene to be found nowhere else on earth, unless,
indeed, the assemblage of some vast caravan in Asia
might be likened thereto." ^
The householders in the counties of eastern Penn-
sylvania had no relish for war, and little inclination
towards rebellion. The Germans, indeed, (ill as some
of them could pronounce the word,) were Whigs almost
^ Letter from Alexander Thomson, of Franklin County, Pennsylvania ;
in the year 1773.
2 A Walk to Darby ; by Townsend Ward.
THE BRITISH IN PHILADELPHIA 269
to a man ; ^ but Tory sentiments prevailed among the
English-speaking residents in large villages, and the
occupiers of extensive farms. Their loyalty was not
demonstrative, and in respect of devotion and self-
sacrifice it fell very far short of the standard set forth
in the Marquis of Montrose's little poem ;2 but they had
enough of it to make Washington's existence a burden
to him as long as King George's army remained in
their neighbourhood. They gave Sir William Howe a
good deal of valuable military information gratis ; and
they sold him the pick of their stables at long prices, —
a traffic which the American Commander-in-Chief, who
had a Virginian's susceptibility in any case where the
ownership of a fine horse was concerned, endeavoured
to repress by the exercise of what, for him, was unusual
severity. Above all, they shirked service in the local
Republican militia ; they offered as much as fifty
guineas to anyone who would enlist in their stead ;
and, if they could not provide themselves with a sub-
stitute, they stopped at home whenever their regiment
was called into the field, and persuaded their friends
and dependents to follow their example. Washington
ruefully contrasted his own very poor show of Penn-
sylvanians with the eager throng of New Englanders
and New Yorkers who had rallied to the defence of the
Republic at Saratoga. Fourteen thousand men, (he
wrote,) were actually in General Gates's camp; — the
best yeomanry in the land, well armed with their own
private weapons, and supplied with provisions of their
own carrying. " How different," the General ex-
claimed, ** is our case ! The disaffection of a great
^ " Of the nineteen members of the Pennsylvanian Assembly, who
voted against the submission of the Constitution to a vote of the people,
not one was a German ; and of the forty-three who voted in favour of it,
twelve were Germans." The Pennsyhania Dutchman, and wherein he
has excelled; by the Hon. Samuel W. Pennypacker, LL.D.
2 " He either fears his fate too much.
Or his deserts are small,
Who dares not put it to the touch
And win, or lose, it all."
2/0 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
part of the inhabitants of this State, the languor of
others, and the internal distraction of the whole, have
been among the great and insuperable difficulties which
I have met with, and have contributed not a little to
my embarrassments in this campaign." ^
Philadelphia closely resembled the province of
which it was the capital in material opulence, in
amenity of aspect, and in the political complexion of
its inhabitants. Already large enough to be a centre
of accumulated wealth, and high civilisation, it had not
as yet outgrown the spacious and convenient site which
had been discovered for it by the unerring judgment
of its founder. Travellers from Europe, where a town
was often a tortuous maze of dwellings crowded within
the narrow limits of an ancient rampart, admired the
straight and uniform thoroughfares, sixty or a hundred
feet broad, which crossed each other at right angles in
William Penn's city. Well paved, adequately lighted,
scrupulously clean, — and completely, though very
economically, equipped with educational, scientific,
social, medical, and charitable institutions, — Phila-
delphia bore visible witness, in all its corners, to the
touch of Benjamin Franklin, the most effective, and
undoubtedly the most rational and unpretentious,
municipal reformer that the world has ever seen.
A beautiful feature was the girdle of foliage which
encircled the body of the place beyond the point where
the interior streets began to lose themselves in the
rural suburbs. One main approach to the town ran
in spring-time through a continuous mile of peach-
blossoms. The residences of the leading merchants
stood amidst gardens and deer-parks, and avenues of
fine trees which the owner pleased himself by thinking
that William Penn had planted. Within the houses
everything was handsome and costly ; — the libraries
stored with subscription-copies of books from the
1 Washington to Major General Armstrong, March 27, 1778 ; to Patrick
Henry, Governor of Virginia, Nov. 13, 1777; to Landon Carter, October 27,
1777.
THE BRITISH IN PHILADELPHIA 27 1
most celebrated presses of France and England ; the
Gobelin tapestry of the sofas ; the brocaded chairs ;
the blue and white tiles round the fire-places ; and
the full-length mirrors let into the folding-doors, which
would have been much better away. The eating and
drinking were the best, and the clothes the most ex-
pensive and fanciful, in America. Up to the eve
of the Revolution many of the Quaker ladies had no
distinctive costume; and, when they ceased to wear
colours, the rich fabrics in which they still indulged
formed a very imposing back-ground to brighter
dresses. Philadelphian public Assemblies, with their
abundance of exceedingly eligible partners, attracted
dancers from all the Central Colonies ; and famous
dancing-masters came over from Europe, and throve as
they could not thrive at home. Half a generation be-
fore the Declaration of Independence forty chariots
and landaus were already counted in the streets of Phila-
delphia. During the next fifteen years private equi-
pages increased rapidly in number; and ornamental
coach-building, which in those days was an art as well
as a trade, obtained a place among the recognised in-
dustries of the town.^
The seeds of disaffection and revolt were slow to
germinate in so rich a soil. John Adams, in one of his
sweeping and rather savage generalisations, described
Philadelphia as a mass of cowardice and Toryism. ^
The Quakers, who were anything rather than cowards,
and who frequently showed more courage in refusing to
fight than a good many noisy partisans on either side
displayed in the hour of battle, had solemnly and
officially declared themselves to be Followers of the
Prince of Peace. So they announced at their yearly
Meeting in the Fall of 1776; and subsequently to that
date things had happened which were not of a nature
^ Kalm's Tra7)eh. Philadelphia , the Place and the People, by Agnes
Repplier. Extracts from the Day-books of Messrs. Quarici and Hunter ;
between Seven and Eight Street, Philadelphia.
'^ Adams' s Diary ) September 18, 1777.
2/2 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
to reconcile them with the Revolution. The Fourth
of July 1777 had been commemorated with every cir-
cumstance that they most disliked ; — explosions of
gunpowder all through the day ; in the evening, a
banquet with warlike toasts, and tickets of admission
purchasable by Republican bank-notes in place of solid
shillings ; and, as soon as night arrived, a brisk smashing
of Quaker windows. When the British army reached
the Chesapeake, and Philadelphia became seriously
threatened, Congress ordered the arrest and deportation
of those influential citizens who would not profess
allegiance to the New Constitution ; and of twenty
recusants no fewer than seventeen were Friends. They
were removed from their pleasant houses, mildly re-
monstrating, and conveyed in waggons to Winchester
in the Shenandoah Valley.^ Here they were detained
in a very liberal confinement, living in separate board-
ing houses of their own selection, making themselves
generally liked in Virginian society, and indoctrinat-
ing all whom they met with their own distrust and
detestation of the Continental paper-money. Two of
them died in the course of the winter ; and Congress
grew ashamed of the treatment which had been in-
flicted upon these excellent and innocent persons.
Washington, who understood their scruples and re-
spected their character, exerted himself actively on
their behalf; and early in April 1778 he had the
satisfaction of passing them through his outposts,
and forwarding them safely home to their families in
Philadelphia. That is the story of the company of
men whom the members of their body still honour
^ Captain Graydon met the party of Friends on their road southwards.
They had amongst them a man of the world to act as courier, in the
person of a fencing-master who was a stout and honest Loyalist. " His
red coat and laced hat were very strikingly in contrast with the flat brims
and drab coloured garments of the rest of the assembly. Friend Pike, as
he was called, officiating in the capacity of a major-domo, or caterer, at
the inns they put up at, was a person, I found, of no small consequence
with his party." Me?noirs of a Life Chiejiy passed in Philadelphia ;
Chapter 12.
THE BRITISH IN PHILADELPHIA 273
under the title of the Virginian Exiles. Sharper perse-
cutions have been chronicled in political, and still more
in religious, history ; but it is hardly surprising that the
Philadelphian Quakers remembered King George with re-
gret, and would have been glad to get him back again
under quiet conditions, and upon reasonable terms. ^
Outside the Society of Friends, Philadelphian opinion
was more equally distributed between Whig and Tory.
That fact is established by the records of a famous
dining club, instituted under the patronage of an ancient
hero whose name has been connected with more than one
powerful organisation the nature and objects of which
he would probably have found it very difficult to com-
prehend. King Tammanend was the Delaware chief
who in Sixth Month, 1684, made over to William Penn
three hundred square miles of fertile land for the con-
sideration of so much wampum, and so many guns, shoes,
stockings, looking-glasses, blankets, and other goods, as
the said William Penn should be pleased to give. Those
were the terms of the agreement ; and the inventory of
articles which the Indian monarch was content to
accept in exchange for his real estate does not suggest
any exalted notion of his sagacity. And yet, however
much he may have lacked the most valuable endow-
ment of that serpent whose effigy he affixed as a signa-
ture to legal documents, Tammanend was no common
personage. He is represented as of noble mien and
fine natural courtesy ; his tribesmen remembered him
with veneration ; and the tradition of his extraordinary
popularity among the white settlers is the origin of
1 Washington's tranquil and upright mind harboured a genuine sym-
pathy with the pure motives, and inflexible consciences, of the Quakers.
Many years afterwards, when he was President of the United States, he
asked one of them on what principle he had been opposed to the Revo-
lution, "friend Washington," was the reply, "upon the principle that
I should be opposed to a change in the present government. All that
was ever secured by Revolution is not an adequate compensation for the
poor mangled soldiers, and for the loss of life and limb." " I honour
your sentiments," replied the President ; " for there is more in them
than mankind has generally considered." The Quakers in the Revolution^
by Isaac Sharpless, President of Haverford College,
VOL. IV. T
274 ^^^ AMERICAN REVOLUTION
that curious immortality which he now, more than ever,
seems hkely to retain. Englishmen and Scotchmen,
Welshmen and Irishmen, who had made their homes in
the colonies, were in the habit of toasting their patron
saints with flowing bumpers whenever their appointed
days came round ; while native-born Americans, with no
Saint Andrew or Saint Patrick of their own to celebrate,
watched these jovial proceedings with a sense of envy,
and at last of emulation. On the First of May, 1772, a
hundred and twenty Pennsylvanians dined together for
the first time in the character of the Sons of Saint Tam-
many of Philadelphia. They were the most important
society of men then alive in their own, or any other,
colony. When the Revolution broke out they took dif-
ferent sides ; many of them became prominent cham-
pions in their respective camps ; and a very careful and
authentic analysis of that list of citizens has proved that
they were, as nearly as possible, evenly divided on the
political issues of their time.^
So closely adjusted was the balance of the two parties
in Philadelphia when hostilities commenced. Matters
had greatly altered in September 1777. By that time
the city had been emptied of all who were ambitious to
assist the Revolution with their counsels, or to strike a
blow for it in the field. The more fiery spirits had long
ago disappeared from civil life. Many young men of
the upper or middle class, and some who were no longer
young, had thrown up their commercial or professional
prospects, and hurried in arms to the front ; while with
little hesitation, and less than no compunction, scores
upon scores of strapping apprentices had broken their
indentures, and sought impunity and glory in a regi-
^ As members of the Club, who supported the Revolution, it is only
necessary to name the Cadwaladers and the Mifflins, President Reed and
President Wharton, Doctor Benjamin Rush, and David Rittenhouse the
astronomer ; while among the sons of Saint Tammany opposed to Inde-
pendence were John Dickinson and Joseph Galloway, Governor Franklin,
Governor Hamilton, Chief Justice Chew, and Judge Shippen. The
Society of the Sons of Saint Tainmany of Philadelphia ; by Francis Von
A. Cabeen.
THE BRITISH IN PHILADELPHIA 275
ment of the Continental Line.^ A great number of
townsmen were absent from their homes, exercising
various, and most indispensable, functions in the service
of the Republic. Pennsylvania sent the largest, and
perhaps the most distinguished, delegation to Congress ;
and Congress had repaired for shelter to the town of
York, ten miles on the safe side of the Susquehanna
River, until the storm blew over. By far the ablest
American administrator was Robert Morris of Phila-
delphia ; and Morris, with others of his fellow-citizens
who held office in the War and Finance Departments,
was under the obligation of following the central gov-
ernment to its temporary place of refuge. Non-official
society, moreover, had been woefully thinned during
the course of the past twelvemonth. In the autumn
of 1776, when Fort Washington had fallen, and the
capital of Pennsylvania lay at the mercy of an invader,
the wealthier partisans of Independence had hastily re-
moved their families, and their most highly prized goods,
out of reach of the Hessians ; and they were still living
in comfortless banishment throughout the least exposed
districts of the Confederacy. The bad news from the
Brandywine fairly cleared out the last of the rich Whigs.^
There remained behind in Philadelphia those men who
were Loyalists by conviction, and a considerable multi-
tude of less estimable people who had not risen to the
intellectual level of possessing any convictions at all.
*' Till we arrived," said an officer of the British Guards,
" I believed it was a very populous city ; but at present
it is very thinly inhabited, and that only by the canaille
and the Quakers." It is a striking proof of the preva-
lence of education, and the strength of public spirit,
in an American colony, that circumstances and motives
^ The day-books of David Evans, the leading cabinet-maker of Phila-
delphia, show the follovving entries for the year 1777 :
" April 20. Zachariah Brant, my apprentice, enlisted in Captain Hender-
son's Company, Ninth Battalion, without my consent.
May 12. John Justice absconded from my shop, and entered the army
as Ensign of Eleventh Battalion, without my approbation."
2 <• Most of our warm people have gone off." Mrs. Henry Drinker's
Diary for Sept. 25, 1777.
T2
276 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
connected with the personal creed of the individual had
in two years reduced the population of a single town
from thirty thousand to twenty thousand souls. For
every native-bred inhabitant of either sex, over the age
of ten years, at least one Royal soldier was now quartered
within the city. If the attempt to heal political maladies
by the drastic remedy of a miUtary occupation could
succeed anywhere, it must have succeeded in Phila-
delphia ; and it may fairly be said that the specific
which had, from the very first, commended itself to
George the Third and his Cabinet, would never again
meet with an equally favourable trial.
The owners of house property in the captured city
had cause to tremble. Two years previously the states-
men in Downing Street had directed our naval and
military commanders to destroy any place in America,
large or small, where congresses or committees had
assembled. That order had never been revoked, and
it was very far indeed from being a dead letter. Several
flourishing sea-ports had been laid in ashes ; and Kings-
ton on the Hudson River, which contained nearly four
thousand people, was deliberately burned down by one
of the Royal generals, in the course of this very autumn,
on the express ground that it was a focus of disaffec-
tion, or, (as the general himself preferred to put it,)
" a nursery for every villain in the country." If it was
a capital crime for a town to have bred famous Whigs,
and to have been the theatre of action for Revolutionary
congresses and committees, Philadelphia, — the home of
Benjamin Franklin, the seat of the First and the Second
Congresses, and the workshop of that committee which
had drawn up the Declaration of Independence, — could
not reasonably claim exemption from the doom which
had already overtaken less guilty communities. But, if
the British ministers desired to extend to the capital
of Pennsylvania the barbarous policy which they had
applied to Norfolk and Falmouth, they would have to
look for other instruments than those gallant soldiers
who had fought their way to victory across the Brandy-
THE BRITISH IN PHILADELPHIA 277
wine and the Schuylkill Rivers. Sir William Howe,
although he failed in restraining the excesses of his Ger-
man auxiliaries, was himself a kindly, honest gentleman ;
and the Earl of CornwaUis, who inspired the energies,
and kept the conscience, of the British army, was then,
as always, the incarnation of chivalry and humanity.
After he entered Philadelphia, the town-mansion of a
rich merchant had been appointed for his headquarters ;
but, when the lady of the house '* represented to him
that it would be impossible for her to remain under her
own roof with so large a company of soldiers and ser-
vants, he courteously expressed his unwillingness to
cause her annoyance, and he took himself that very
afternoon to other lodgings." ^ A great majority of the
British officers treated their civilian hosts with consider-
ation and friendliness. Affable, easily pleased, — and,
according to modern notions of the relation between
age and military rank, delightfully and preposterously
young, — they tried to make themselves endurable and,
to the best of their ability, even welcome guests. Henry
Drinker was a LoyaHst Quaker, and one of the Virginian
exiles; and Mrs. Drinker, in her husband's enforced
absence, was much disconcerted when an English field-
officer installed himself in her house and premises with
a train of white and black servants, horses, cows and
sheep, and a whole poultry-yard of hens and turkeys.
But the Major proved to be a thoughtful, well-con-
ducted, and teachable youth, over whose morals she
carefully watched, and whose modest displays of hospi-
tality towards his brother officers she took pleasure in
promoting and regulating. Certain men of fashion and
title, who had come straight from Ministerial circles in
London, were prepared to be rude, and rather brutal,
in their dealings with the native population ; but these
ill-conditioned personages were kept in order by the
unconcealed disapproval of their comrades. " Lord
Lindsey has arrived here;" (so Richard Fitzpatrick
wrote from Philadelphia ;) " but his ton is too bad even
1 Philadelphia, the Place and People ; Chapter 13.
278 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
for this part of the world, and nobody can bear him." ^
Those delegates to Congress, who came from less
wealthy colonies, had been scandalised by the luxury and
extravagance which prevailed in the capital of Pennsyl-
vania. Richard Henry Lee of Virginia called the city
**an attractive scene of debauch and amusement; " and
to James Lovell of Massachusetts it was before every-
thing else ** a place of crucifying expenses." Phila-
delphia, in both respects, more than maintained its
character during the memorable winter when it lodged
Sir William Howe and his army. After the river had
been unblocked by the surrender of Fort Mifflin, an
early tide brought up the Delaware a hundred and
twenty sutlers and hucksters, Tories all, and Scotchmen
nearly to a man. They distributed amongst themselves
the most desirable places of business left vacant by the
hurried departure of Whig traders, and filled the shop-
fronts with goods which could be purchased only by
hard money. So long as that precious commodity held
out, abundance reigned in Philadelphia. The younger
farmers braved very severe penalties in the event of
their detection by Washington's scouts, and brought
their well-laden horses into the British lines from many
miles round about. The women, shunning the high-
ways, and travelling by night across the fields, carried
in upon their backs fowls, eggs, fresh meat, and choice
vegetables ; and then returned to their villages with
a pocketful of dollars and shillings, or, (what in the
rural districts was then more coveted than silver,) a load
of salt. There was often a plentiful beef-market ; and
great cheeses from New Jersey lay in heaps along the
town-wharf.^ The materials for hospitality were no
1 This nobleman, in a letter to England, professed to pity the Royal
officers who had been killed at Germantown " for having died by the
hands of fellows who have hardly the form of men, and whose hearts are
still more deformed than their bodies."
2 Proceedings of the Historical Society of Philadelphia for March 1847.
The History of Moor eland from the commencement of the American Revo-
lution, by William J. Buck. Diary of Robert Morton. Philadelphia
Society One Hundred Years Ago^ by Frederick D. Stone, 1879.
THE BRITISH IN PHILADELPHIA 279
longer lacking ; and, though even among Loyalists there
were already some downcast faces and anxious hearts,
the magnates of the city wished for nothing better than
to see red coats round their table. Our British veterans,
after a very short trial, pronounced the Philadelphian
water too brackish to drink ; but there was great store
of Madeira in the cellars, and the wine was not grudged
or spared. The younger officers found ample and varied
amusement in the weekly balls at the City Tavern ; the
South Street theatre ; the race-course for which room
had been made within the circuit of the forts; ''the
cock-pit in Moore's Alley; the wild suppers at the
Bunch of Grapes ; and the Club dinners, late and long,
in the rooms of the Indian Queen." ^
The unmarried ladies of Philadelphia had never
known so brilliant a season. Each of them had her
individual preferences for scarlet, or for blue and
yellow; but few among them were indifferent to a
uniform as long as it was worn by a man of honour
and prowess.^ When a beautiful girl was likewise an
enthusiastic Loyalist, there were no bounds to the
admiration which she excited in Royal officers of every
grade from the Commander-in-Chief downwards. A
letter exists from Miss Rebecca Franks, the daughter of
1 Philadelphia, the Place and the People', Chapter 13. Mrs. Eliza-
beth Drinker showed a motherly uneasiness about the effect of all this
dissipation upon the young man whom she called " our Major." At
first he was contented to give an occasional dinner to his comrades, who
"made very little noise, and left at a reasonable hour." But, when the
playhouse opened, he could not keep away from it ; and at last, on two
evenings running, he stayed out till after midnight at a concert and a
public ball.
2 In the previous summer, when the American army was at German-
town, Lieutenant MacMichael, of the Pennsylvania Line, wrote as
follows in his diary: " August 3. The largest collection of young ladies
I almost ever beheld came to camp. They marched in three columns.
The field-officers detached scouting parties to prevent being surrounded by
them. Being sent on scout, I at last sighted the ladies, and gave them to
kn(;w that they must repair to Head-quarters ; upon which they accom-
panied me as prisoners. But, on parading them at the Colonel's marquee,
they were dismissed after we had treated them with a double bowl of
Sangaree."
280 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
a keen Tory, addressed, (deplorable to relate,) to the
wife of a Signer. " You can have no idea," she wrote,
" of the life of continued amusement I live in. I can
scarce have a moment to myself. I spent Tuesday
evening at Sir William Howe's, where we had a concert
and dance. I asked his leave to send you a handker-
chief to show the fashions. He very politely gave me
permission to send anything you wanted, though I told
him you were a Delegate's lady. Oh, how I wished
Mr. Paca would let you come in for a week or two!
Tell him I'll answer for your being let to return. You 'd
have an opportunity of raking as much as you choose,
at Plays, Balls, Concerts, or Assemblies. I have been
but three evenings alone since we moved to town." ^
As seen from the outside by Tory husbands and fathers,
who had remained in the rural districts in order to
prevent their landed estates from going to rack and
ruin, Philadelphia appeared to be an Elysium of felicity.
James Allen, the member of a noted Loyalist family,
sadly compared his own lot with that of his relatives
who stayed behind in the city, bent on pleasure, and
well supplied with coined money.'^ "There," he said,
** I should have enjoyed ease and security, and freedom
of speech, so long denied me here. . . . My wife writes
me that everything is gay and happy, and it is like to
prove a frolicking winter. The city is filled with goods :
and provisions are plenty, though dear. Next campaign
will be a warm, if not a decisive, one. It is impossible
that this wretched country can subsist much longer."
1 William Paca was a Congressman from Maryland. The passage
quoted is condensed by the omission of a few sentences.
Miss Franks, like a brave woman, stuck to her colours when adversity
came. She accompanied her father into exile, married a Royal colonel,
and made her home in England. Forty years afterwards, when the war of
1812 was over and done with, she delighted General Winfield Scott by
asking him whether he was the young rebel who had recently taken the
liberty of fighting against His Majesty's troops at Chippewa Falls and
Lundy Lane.
2 Mrs. Allen, who had lately received a large present of Half Joes, —
a Portuguese piece worth five and thirty shillings, — had gold to the amount
of two hundred and forty pounds in hand.
THE BRITISH IN PHILADELPHIA 28 1
A strong personal interest attaches itself to some of
the participators in that round of joyous frivolity ; for
the British army contained an unusual proportion of
young men with very noteworthy careers before them.
Banastre Tarleton of the Light Dragoons, — who, during
this respite from active warfare, was riding handicaps,
and making love, with all the ardour of three-and-
twenty, — was at present Brigade Major of Sir William
Howe's cavalry. Before the American War ended, his
fame as a leader of horse surpassed that of any officer,
in any European service, who was still of an age to
mount his charger. Cciptain Richard Fitzpatrick, an
officer of the Guards, survived to hold military rank
just below the very highest, and to acquire some
distinction, and much popularity, in the House of
Commons. And yet all which he accomphshed by
sword or tongue was little in comparison with the cele-
brity merited, rather than obtained, by his pen. No
old-fashioned Whig, who loves a well-turned couplet,
would admit that the author of The Liars, and of the most
crisp and vivacious fragments of verse in the Rolliad,
is inferior to any political satirist since John Dryden.
This brilliant young Guardsman had acquired his
taste for books at the feet of Burke, and in free-
flowing cousinly discourse with Charles Fox ; but an-
other promising officer, — who was seen more frequently
than Fitzpatrick in Philadelphian society, and who
took much greater pains to please it, — had served his
apprenticeship in a very inferior literary school.
Captain John Andre had been intended for civil life ;
and, before he came of age, he was a prime favourite
among a circle of people in the Midland counties of
England who talked of themselves, and of each other,
as poets, with less than no just claim to that appellation.
Supreme among them was Miss Anna Seward, the
Swan of Lichfield, whose odes and sonnets, even after
this lapse of time, it would be ungallant to criticise, and
almost unkind to quote ; while, on the other hand, her
six volumes of letters arouse in the mind of the reader a
282 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
wish that she had never written except in rhyme. Andr^
had fallen in love with Honora Sneyd, who then was
domesticated in the Seward family, and who had so
little sense of discrimination that, after rejecting her
young admirer, she became the second among sev-
eral successive wives of Richard Lovell Edgeworth.
Andre tore himself away from the scene of his disappoint-
ment, and sought occupation and change of thought in
a military career. He became an admirable soldier.
At this period he served as aide-de-camp to General
Charles Grey, who would have none but the best about
him ; and he very soon was appointed Adjutant General
of the army in America. He heartily believed in the
cause for which he fought, and he possessed qualities
and accomplishments which recommended that cause to
wavering politicians of his own, and still more of the
other, sex. Under his inspiration the Enghsh officers
gave a series of performances in the Philadelphia theatre,
from which professional players, who never were more
than barely tolerated in that Quaker city, had been
scared away by the terrors of the Revolution. Andre
himself was the most capable of the actors, the chief
scene-painter, the cleverest designer of costumes, and
the only member of the company who was both willing
and able to compose a prologue.^
Captain Andre soon had the opportunity of display-
ing his talents as a stage manager on a scale which
made a considerable noise at the time, and has had its
fair share of notice ever since. Six weeks before the
end of 1777 Sir William Howe, finding the War Office
1 Miss Seward, who was sincerely attached to Andre, and never ceased
to lament his fate, always wrote about him with less than her usual
affectation, and a somewhat firmer hold on the principles of grammar. ** I
am at present," (so she told a correspondent in the year 1787,) "re-reading
the, by me, often read scriptures of your idolatry, the great lyrist Gray's
Epistles. . . . Andre's letters, published with my Monody on him, have,
to me, much more fascinating beauty." Six years afterwards she says,
in a letter from Buxton : "Again do I seem surrounded by that happy
party, as in the long-vanished period which formed the ill-starred love of
Andre and Honora. There it is that tender sighs, and starting tears, pay,
in mournful luxury, the tribute of remembrance."
THE BRITISH IN PHILADELPHIA 283
deaf to his call for reinforcements, wrote home to the
Secretary of State that he must beg to be relieved from
his employment, as he no longer enjoyed the necessary
confidence and support of his superiors. Lord George
Germaine, who already foresaw the total collapse of his
own absurd plan of campaign, and whose disloyalty
matched his incompetence, resolved not to let slip this
unexpected chance for proclaiming to the world at large
that the general, and not the minister, was to blame.
It was an easy matter to make Sir William Howe a
culprit in the judgment of Englishmen. Taxpayers
throughout the country laid at his door the indecisive
character of those military results which had ill re-
warded their enormous pecuniary sacrifices during the
last forty months ; and the feeling against him was no-
where so strong as among the talkers in London. Those
gentlemen, (said Horace Walpole,) had subsisted " a
whole fortnight on the capture of Mud Island ; " which
was meagre diet for people who had lived through the
glorious years of 1759 and 1760, when every wind
brought tidings of substantial conquests from one or
another quarter of the globe. George the Third's min-
isters, like other weak and ill-conditioned rulers, had
taken care to feed the newspapers with inspired para-
graphs throwing contempt upon the adversaries with
whom they were at war ; and their industry in calUng
public attention to the paucity of American soldiers,
and the misery and despair of the American people,
had the natural effect of aggravating disappointment
and discontent in England. " We were often told,"
(wrote the Morni7ig Post,) "■ that Mr. Washington's army
was inferior in number to the British, — sickly, dying,
ill-clothed, dispirited, and by no means so well-armed as
our own troops." Why, (it was asked,) had not the
valiant, highly-disciplined, and well-appointed Royal vet-
erans swept such a rabble off the face of the universe ?
That was the tone of the Whig orators, and, still
more copiously and emphatically, of the Tory pamphlet-
eers and journalists. To refrain from throwing over an
284 I^^E. AMERICAN REVOLUTION
ill-used, and only half successful, subordinate demanded
a larger share of moral courage, and a finer sense of
equity, than the Cabinet possessed. Early in February
1778 Germaine informed Sir William Howe that his
resignation was accepted, and that Sir Henry Clinton,
who was then in England, had been chosen to succeed
him in his command. The British in Philadelphia, to
their credit, took a very different view of the situation
from that which prevailed across the ocean. With the
prescient instinct of a brave and proud army, they
recognised in Sir Henry Clinton a general under whose
leadership they would gain no laurels, and compared
him very unfavourably with the masterly tactician who,
(whatever his detractors might allege against him,) had
won half a dozen pitched battles, and had seized the
hostile capital. Accustomed to Sir William Howe's
ways, and all the fonder of him for his faults, they
loved him as an indulgent commander, and a hearty
companion ; who lived and let live ; and who, when off
duty, was as genial to his followers, high and low, as
on the actual day of battle he was formidable to the
enemy. When the news of his approaching departure
reached the mess-tables in Philadelphia, the whole army
eagerly caught at a proposal to send him off on his
homeward journey with a farewell demonstration of
gratitude, devotion, and regret which should be an un-
spoken, but unequivocal, rebuke to the civilians in
Downing Street.
Sir William's soldiers resolved to give, in their gen-
eral's honour, the most splendid festivity that the New
World had ever witnessed. All ranks would gladly
have subscribed towards the cost of the entertainment ;
but a committee of wealthy field-officers took the entire
expense upon themselves; and Andr6, who was not as
yet a field-officer, was allowed a free hand in the ar-
rangement of the spectacle. He was largely responsible
for a fantastic exhibition of sham chivalry which would
have appeared infinitely romantic to Anna Seward, and
absurdly inaccurate to a genuine and sturdy antiquary
THE BRITISH IN PHIIADELPHIA 285
like her contemporary, Doctor Percy. Captain Mon-
tr^sor, with his sappers and miners, undertook to con-
struct the military trophies, the triumphal arches, and
the lists and barriers for a Passage of Arms which was
to be the central feature of the show. Andre himself
painted the decorations, selected the mottoes, and com-
posed the amazing rhodomontades which were put into
the mouths of those unlucky subalterns who consented
to be disguised as Heralds. He flattered and cajoled
the local beauties till they promised to grace the pag-
eant ; and he furnished the pattern, and was not above
assisting in the manufacture, of their draperies. The
Meschianza, (he said,) had turned him into a capable
milliner, and had initiated him in all the mysteries " of
cap-wire, gauze, and needles." That confession was
made in a letter addressed to the daughter of a Loyalist
Judge, — Margaret Shippen, a girl of seventeen, who in
the course of another year became the wife of Benedict
Arnold. Long afterwards, when she had passed through
a dangerous illness and a period of unspeakable m^oral
anguish, Colonel Tarleton wrote out to America from
London that she was still the handsomest woman in
England. John Andre has left us a pencil-sketch of Mar-
garet Shippen in her ball-dress, with her hair built up
to a height of eighteen inches above the forehead. The
artist and his sitter were a well-assorted, but, (little as
they then knew it,) a most tragic pair.^
These daughters of Pennsylvania were reproached
with levity and heartlessness by sober patriots on either
side of politics. The stories of cold and hunger, disease
and death, which all through the winter arrived from
that exposed and dreary upland where Washington's
soldiers were doing their best to keep body and soul
^ According to a tradition preserved in the Shippen family the Judge,
at the very last moment, forbade his daughter to appear in the procession,
and the day was spent at home in t('ars. It has been the fate of this poor
lady to be slightly over-praised, and profusely over-censured, by American
controversialists ; and certain points of her conduct have been discussed in
print at almost as great length as if they were circumstances in the personal
history of Mary Queen of Scots.
286 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
together, aroused the compassion even of strong Loyal-
ists ; ^ and the American people in general were pained
and shocked by the contrast between the suffering at
Valley Forge, and the luxury and ostentation which ran
riot within the city. It was remembered how, towards
the commencement of the Revolution, the Philadel-
phians had proposed to compliment Mrs. Washington
by a public ball ; how Samuel Adams and President
Hancock had begged her to discountenance the open
pursuit of amusement during a great crisis in the for-
tunes of the country ; and how earnestly she had as-
sured the two statesmen that their wishes were in entire
agreement with her own sentiments. ^ The Whigs kept
the Meschianza in mind when their own hour of triumph
came ; but it was not in an American's nature to deal
harshly with women, and the penalty inflicted was the
mildest that could sufilice to mark the offence. The
return of Congress to Philadelphia was celebrated by a
dance at the City Tavern, *' offered to the young ladies
who had manifested their attachment to the cause of
virtue and freedom by sacrificing every convenience to
the love of their country; " and to that dance the hero-
ines of the Tournament were not invited.
The festival of the eighteenth May, 1778, fills as
large a space in the chronicles of the early American
RepubUc as did the Field of the Cloth of Gold in
our own Tudor histories. The affair was called the
Meschianza, — an Italian word that signifies " a Medley ; "
and a medley it was. The ceremonies began with a
Grand Regatta. Gaily decked barges, interspersed at
intervals with bands of music, moved slowly down a
line of war-vessels and transports which, with yards
manned and colours flying, extended along the whole
1 " How insensible do these people appear, while our land is so greatly
desolated, and death and sore destruction has overtaken, and impends
over, so many ! " That was the view held about the Meschianza by Mrs.
Henry Drinker, whose husband had been punished for Loyalism. A col-
lection of Tory opinions, very much to the same effect, is given in a note
to the Introduction of Wharton's Diplomatic Correspondence.
2 Martha Washington^ by Anne HoUingsworth Wharton j Chapter 6.
THE BRITISH LV PHILADELPHIA 287
river-front of the city. Then the company disem-
barked on a noble lawn, where a square plot of four
acres had been marked out for the Tournament. An
EngHsh, and an American, Queen of Beauty sat facing
each other at either extremity of the ground, attended,
both of them, by a bevy of six damsels in Turkish
habits and turbans. Six Knights, resplendent in
crimson and white silk, and caracoling on grey steeds,
rode forth to assert that the ladies of the Blended Rose
excelled all others in wit and beauty ; and the chal-
lenge was accepted by as many Knights of the Burning
Mountain, in black and orange raiment, and on coal-
black horses. A more impressive sight was the com-
pact hedge of well-drilled infantry, planted stiff and
silent around the whole enclosure. The cavaliers ran
their tilts, shivered their lances, and then fired pistols
at each other until the Marshal proclaimed that the
ladies were satisfied with the proofs of love and valour
given by their respective champions. When these
antics were concluded, the actors and spectators walked
in procession to an adjoining mansion, and passed,
through a hall stained in imitation of Sienna marble,
into a ballroom where the walls, picked out in blue
and gold, were reflected in eighty or ninety enormous
mirrors. At midnight there was a supper of twelve
hundred dishes, lighted by as many wax-candles, and
served by negroes in oriental trappings, with silver
collars and bracelets. The lawn outside blazed with
illuminations, and transparencies, and fountains spout-
ing fire ; and the proceedings were terminated by the
roar and rush of innumerable rockets. That was the
last gunpowder which General Howe saw burned in
America.^
^ The splash and notoriety of the Meschianza, when contrasted with
the substantial value of the successes which it was designed to celebrate,
were alien to British military sentiment everywhere outside Philadelphia.
When General Eliott was preparing to leave Gibraltar, after his immortal
defence of the Rock, the garrison desired to give him an entertainment,
in order to mark their o])inion of his eminent services. An officer of high
rank begged to know in what shape the compliment would be most agree-
able to him. " Anything," replied the veteran, " but a Meschianza."
288 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Lord George Germaine's ill-conceived plan of attack-
ing the citadel of the Revolution from three distant
quarters had already been severely punished ; but, for
the present, he escaped the full penalties of his faulty
strategy by the misconduct of adversaries whose folly
equalled, and whose perversity even exceeded, his own.
Washington, indeed, had done more than his part on
behalf of the common cause. At great risk to himself,
he had depleted his scanty ranks, and despatched a
generous supply of staunch veterans to the assistance
of the Northern army in its hour of need. That army
had triumphed, rapidly, completely, and far beyond
the hopes of anyone except himself ; and Washington's
own turn had now come to be helped by the general
towards whose victory he had so largely and unselfishly
contributed. It is impossible to doubt that, if Philip
Schuyler had still been in command when the firing
ceased at Saratoga, his best fighting men would have
been started on their march down the Hudson Valley
as soon as they had cleaned their gun-barrels. That
was the course demanded alike by public spirit and
personal gratitude ; but Schuyler's successor had little
of the first, and of the latter much less than none at
all. The very last person in the world whose interests
General Gates would take any trouble, or make any
sacrifice, to promote, was George Washington. Having
ruined and supplanted Schuyler, Gates henceforward
flew at higher game ; and he had not the smallest
intention of taking any steps to ensure the success, and
consolidate the influence, of that military leader whom
he now regarded as his solitary rival. Burgoyne capit-
ulated on the seventeenth of October ; and a fortnight
afterwards Washington was reduced to petition, urgently
and specifically, for the performance of a service which
should have been done unasked. One of the gentle-
men of his family, (to use his own expression,) was
deputed to visit General Gates in order to point out
the many happy consequences which would accrue
from an immediate reinforcement being sent from the
VALLEY FORGE 289
Northern army. The gentleman selected was Alex-
ander Hamilton ; but his persuasive tongue altogether
failed in recalling Horatio Gates to a sense of honour.
The partisans of that intriguer induced Congress to
pass a Resolution to the effect that the soldiers trans-
ferred from the Northern army should in no case
exceed two thousand five hundred men ; and the larger
portion of this stingy detachment was intercepted and
detained on its way southward. Only a very few regi-
ments, thinned in numbers and behind their time, were
eventually permitted to rejoin the American camp on
the Schuylkill River.
It is possible enough that, if Washington's hands
had been loyally and promptly strengthened, Sir
William Howe would have been forced to relinquish
Philadelphia, and retreat across country to New York,
before the year was over. While the contest for the
Delaware was still in progress, five or six thousand
additional troops would have enabled the Republicans
to operate powerfully and decisively in the Jerseys
without relaxing their grasp on Pennsylvania. But,
before the end of November, Fort Mercer and Fort
Mifflin had succumbed ; the British possessed the
waterway, and had made the city proof against assault ;
and Washington reluctantly abandoned his schemes
and efforts for expelling the invader, and fell back
upon the second-best. Bad as might be his prospects,
they had been worse on that day twelvemonth. If
Philadelphia had fallen in December 1776, it had been
his purpose to retire beyond the Susquehanna River,
and thence, (should misfortune still pursue him,) into
the recesses of the Alleghany Mountains ; but in
December 1777 he determined to remain at a point
where he could hold the Royal foraging-parties in
respect throughout the winter, and be near at hand,
when spring came, to avail himself of the very earliest
opportunity for turning the tables upon his adversary.
He stationed his army on a piece of land a mile in
depth, extending three thousand yards from east to
VOL. IV. u
290 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
west along the southern bank of the Schuylkill River.
The ground on two sides fell away in acclivities of a
height, and a slope, perfectly adapted for defence by
cannon and musketry ; and the rear was protected by
a stream which supplied water-power for an establish-
ment of iron-works known as Valley Forge. That little
village, clustered at the bottom of a deep ravine, gave
a name to what, as time goes on, bids fair to be the
most celebrated encampment in the world's history.
On the eighteenth December the soldiers remained in
quarters, taking their part in a public Thanksgiving
which, with distress and danger around them, and
starvation immediately in front of them, was something
of a pathetic ceremony ; and next morning they spread
themselves over hills thickly covered with that forest
timber which an American army is always capable of
putting to valuable uses. Washington, never happier
than when handling a pencil and a pair of compasses,
had drawn out the ground-plan of his military city.^
His rank and file were divided into parties of twelve,
and directed to build cabins of a size and pattern
minutely laid down in the General Orders ; and, in every
one of his battalions, a prize of twelve dollars was
promised to the squad of men who housed themselves
most speedily and commodiously. As fast as their huts
were finished, the gangs of workmen were passed on
to the redoubts and intrenchments ; and before long
the camp had become, to all intents and purposes, an
impenetrable fortress.^
1 "The General has a great turn for mechanics. It's astonishing with
what niceness he directs everything in the building way, condescending
even to measure the things himself, that all may be perfectly uniform."
Diary of Mr. John Hunter, a merchant from London y Mount Vernon,
November 17, 1785.
2 The American army never stopped long in any one place without
fortifying it to the verge of impregnability. Colonel Boyle quotes the
description given by an officer on Sir William Howe's Staff of the position
occupied by Washington before he moved back upon Valley Forge. " For
a quarter of a mile in front of the American camp was the thickest
abattis of felled trees I ever saw, similar to what the French had last war
at Ticonderoga ; and, had we proceeded, we should probably have shared
VALLEY FORGE 29I
It was well that these indispensable labours were
brought to a conclusion before the spirit of the troops
was deadened, and their bodily strength exhausted ;
for they were very soon in evil case. The manage-
ment of the war by a popular assembly was a
system for which there had been something to say
during the opening scenes of the Revolution ; but that
system had entirely broken down under the stress of
invasion and defeat. The delegates to Congress,
whom Thomas Paine had inoculated with a British
radical's distrust of paid officials, still preferred to do
everything of importance themselves, and were now
doing it very badly. Already the national senate of
America had degenerated, from a business-like and
respected representative body, into the thing which
Englishmen, borrowing an old classical term from the
most stirring period of English history, always have
called, and always will call, a Rump. The most ex-
perienced Congressmen were employed far away, —
negotiating in foreign countries, and governing or
fighting in distant regions of the Confederacy. Many
a capable citizen, actuated by the intense local
patriotism of an American, was absorbed in provincial
politics, to the exclusion of any keen and intelli-
gent interest in the central Government of his nation.^
During the last months of 1777 the sittings of Congress
were attended by sixteen or seventeen, and sometimes
only by nine or ten, members. This fluctuating handful
of untrained, and for the most part insignificant,
personages, — with co-equal powers, and no mutual
the same fate with General Abercrombie's army. We reconnoitred for
nine miles round the camp to sec if we could find any opening; but it
was all equally strong."
^ " This, more than ever, is the time for Congress to be filled with the
first characters from every State, instead of having a thin Assembly, and
many Slates totally unrepresented, as is the case at present. I have often
regretted the pernicious, and what appears to me fatal, policy of having
our ablest men empl.iyed in the formation of the more local Governments,
leaving the great national concern to be managed by men of more con-
tracted abilities." So George Washington wrote to his brother at the end
of April, 1778.
U 2
292 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
understanding as to the distribution amongst them-
selves of executive functions, — performed or neglected,
as the humour took them, the whole administrative
work of the State.
These methods of proceeding had long ago been
condemned by Robert Morris in precise and forcible
language. If Congress, (he said,) meant to win in the
struggle with Great Britain, they must pay good men
to do their business as it ought to be done ; for no
Delegate could attend to his senatorial duties, and at
the same time serve his country in the capacity of an
executive officer. ** I do aver," so Morris continued,
** that there will be more money totally lost in horses,
waggons, and cattle, for want of sufficient persons to
look after them, than would have paid all the salaries
that Paine ever did, or ever will, grumble at." The
wisdom of these criticisms and recommendations was
justified by the event. When affairs were taken out
of the hands of boards, and given over -to competent
individuals, — when single ambassadors superseded diplo-
matic commissions in Europe, and chiefs of departments
took the place of administrative committees at home, —
then, and not till then, the long and weary conflict was
at last brought to a successful issue. ^
A full year had elapsed since Robert Morris uttered
his protest and his prophecy ; but the mind of Congress
was still unchanged, and its practice had altered for
the worse. The Commissary General of the American
army, ever since hostihties commenced, had been
Colonel Joseph Trumbull, the eldest and worthy son
of the Governor of Connecticut. Acting in close and
familiar concert with Washington he kept the soldiers
amply, and often lavishly, supplied with victuals when-
ever the camp was stationary ; and, in those black
months when forced marches, and repeated defeats,
brought their inevitable consequences in the shape of
want and hardship, it was very generally admitted that
^ This sentence is extracted, almost word for word, from The Life of
Robert Morris^ by Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer, Ph.p.
VALLEY FORGE 293
the Chief of the Commissariat was not to blame.
The recognised success of an arrangement which
pleased the army, and by this time had been brought
into smooth working order, was too much for the
equanimity of Congress. Towards the middle of the
|ar 1777 the politicians at Philadelphia, in their
ilousy of military administrators, estabHshed a rule
Lt subordinate agents, in the service of the Com-
ssariat, should account directly with Congress over
head of their departmental superiors. Colonel
[umbull, after an honest and patient attempt to
•ry forward his duty under these new and impossible
iditions, threw up his employment, and retired into
[vate life.^ He was soon followed by the Quarter-
:ster General, who went to his home on the plea of
lealth, and after a while sent in his resignation.
Never did a set of public men commit a greater blun-
der from a poorer motive. Even Horatio Gates, who
seldom permitted himself to question the policy of
Congress, confessed that " such a solecism was hardly
ever committed as changing the Commissariat in the
middle of a campaign." ^ Other Governments, with
disastrous results, have sometimes swapped horses when
crossing a stream ; but the folly of Congress went
altogether beyond a metaphor which is supposed to
express the quintessence of human fatuity. Their
Quartermaster General had ceased, in the summer of
1777, to discharge those duties upon which the well-
being, and in extreme cases the very existence, of an
army in the field depends ; and no successor was
1 Colonel Trumbull told his father, in July 1777, that he was about
to meet a Committee of Congress, on the affairs of his Department, which
were wholly at a stand. " I am almost fatigued to death," he wrote.
*' I have been obliged to stand at the scales myself. All the money in
the universe would not tempt me to serve another three months such as
the last." In the course of the year the Colonel died, — killed, if ever
man was, by hard work. His story is set forth in Jonathan Trumbull's
noble and touching Memorial to the President of Congress. Trumbull
Papers ; Part III., pages 279-282.
^ Horatio Gates to Jonathan IrumbuU; September 4, 1 777.
294 ^^-^ AMERICAN REVOLUTION
appointed until the month of March in the year that
followed. During the later part of that protracted
interval American military history presents a monoto-
nous tale of cruel, and altogether unnecessary, suf-
fering.
The effect of this calamitous policy, clearly per-
ceptible from the very first, was brought into startling
prominence as soon as ever Washington had settled
himself down at Valley Forge. On the twentieth
December, General Varnum of Massachusetts reported
that his division had eaten no meat during forty-eight
hours, and had been three whole days without bread.
Next morning the Commander-in-Chief wrote to the
President of Congress that ominous symptoms of dis-
content in several of the regiments " had brought forth
the only Commissary in the purchasing line in camp, and,
with him, this melancholy and alarming truth that he
had not a single hoof of any kind to slaughter, and not
more than twenty-five barrels of flour ; " and the same
gentleman admitted, on cross-examination, that he was
not aware whence, or when, any additional supply
would be forthcoming. Dearth was converted into
famine ; and famine endured over the space of two live-
long months. As late as the sixteenth February 1778,
according to Washington, "a part of the army had
been a week without any kind of flesh, and the rest
three or four days." Evening after evening the cry of
** No Meat ! No Meat ! " could be heard along the line of
huts. Some of the generals, wrung with pity for their
followers^ tried to persuade themselves that the English
race was unduly addicted to a diet of animal food, and
suggested a substitute in the shape of soaked wheat and
sugar, or soup *' thickened with bread." ^ On those
many days when there were no emaciated bullocks to
be killed for food, vitality was maintained on a porringer
^The notion of making soup without stock gave rise to some grim
jests among the rank and file. There was a story current in the
American army of a well-meaning officer who inquired what the men were
cooking in their kettle. "A stone, Colonel : " was the reply. "They say
there is some strength in stones if you can get it out."
VALLEY FORGE 295
of flour-paste, or a lump of dough baked in the embers.
All ranks fared alike ; and the medical staff shared the
ration of the private soldiers, three-fourths of whom
were qualified to be patients if there had been any
tonics or cordials with which to treat them. In the
middle of September, by a special vote of Congress,
thirty hogsheads of rum had been served out to the
troops ** in compliment for their gallant behaviour at
the battle of Brandywine ; " but, all through the win-
ter, there was only one beverage on draught at Val-
ley Forge. " Fire-cake and water for breakfast ! "
cried Doctor Albigence Waldo. " Fire-cake and water
for dinner ! Fire-cake and water for supper ! the Lord
send that our Commissary for Purchases may live on
fire-cake and water ! " Life in that camp was a dull
and drawn out tragedy; but not a few of its inmates,
after the habit of American humourists, accepted their
misfortunes with ironical acquiescence. Doctor Waldo
had been at pains to enumerate in his diary the resi-
dential attractions of a place like Valley Forge. There
was, (he wrote,) plenty of wood and water; and the
hill-side faced the south. The soldiers had no tempta-
tion to plunder, for there was nothing to steal. They
all of them would learn to be heavenly-minded, like
Jonah in the belly of the great fish ; and no one need
be home-sick, because the reflections suggested by his
surroundings would lead him to employ his leisure hours
in filling his knapsack with the necessaries required
for the journey to another, and a better, home.
That was indeed the case, in sad and stern earnest.
Before the army reached Valley Forge nearly three
thousand of the rank and file were returned unfit for
duty *'by reason of their being barefoot, and otherwise
naked." ^ Washington, in an outspoken and eloquent
exposition of the future which awaited his unfortunate
army, told how the troops, for want of blankets, were
^"The Commander-in-Chief offers a reward of ten dollars to any
person who shall, by nine o'clock on Monday morning, produce the best
substitute for shoes, made of raw hides." General Washington's Orderly
Book for November 22, 1777.
296 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
obliged "to sit up all night by fires, instead of tak-
ing comfortable rest in a natural and common way."
" Soap, vinegar, and other articles allowed by Congress,"
(so ran another sentence of the same letter,) *' we see
none of ; nor have we seen them, I believe, since the
battle of Brandywine. The first, indeed, we have little
occasion for, few men having more than one shirt,
many only the moiety of one, and some none at all." ^
Hardly anyone was comfortably clad ; a great number
of soldiers lacked even the means of decency; and
every trace of military finery had long ago vanished.
Officers mounted guard in a sort of dressing-gown,
made of an old rug, or a woollen bed-quilt, and kept
what remained of their uniforms against the return of
better times. Months afterwards, when the worst was
over, a party of aides-de-camp gave a supper to which
no one, who possessed a whole suit, was admitted ;
and the room was crowded with distinguished guests.
Anthony Wayne reported, in passionate language,
that near a third of his men had no shirt under Heaven,
and that their outer garments hung about their limbs in
ribbons. He had purchased for them, (he stated,) from
his own pocket, a large quantity of stout cloth ; but
the Clothier General held the proceeding to be irregular,
and refused to issue the material which he had in store.
Wayne had always loved to see his people smart, and he
now could not endure the consciousness that they were
miserable. " I am not fond of danger ; " — so he wrote
of himself, although no one else would have said it
about him ; — " but I would most cheerfully agree to
enter into action once every week in place of visiting
each hut in my encampment, which is my constant
practice, and where objects strike my eye and ear whose
wretched condition beggars all description. The whole
army is sick, and crawling with vermin." Meanwhile
hogsheads of raiment, and footgear, were lying at dif-
ferent places along the roads and in the woods, spoiling
^ Washington to the President of Congress ; Valley Forge, 23 Decem-
ber, 1777.
VALLEY FORGE 297
For want of teams, or of money to pay the teamsters.
The Commander-in-Chief had warned Congress that
nilitary arrangements, ** Hke the mechanism of a clock,
nust necessarily be imperfect and disordered by want
)f a part;" and, in the absence of a Quartermaster
jeneral, the Transport Service was now a clock with-
)ut the weights. '' Perhaps by midsummer," wrote
Washington, '' the soldier may receive thick stockings,
ihoes, and blankets, which he will contrive to get rid
Df in the most expeditious manner. By an eternal
*ound of the most stupid management the public
:reasure is expended to no kind of purpose, while the
nen have been left to perish by inches with cold and
lakedness."
Winter descended, in all its horrors, upon the
'amished and ragged army. On Christmas-day the
iveather broke, and next morning the snow lay four
nches deep. It remained piled up against, and be-
:ween, the huts in high and solid drifts ; for the first
downfall was followed by a long procession of clear and
^^ery cold days, with nights of bitter frost. '* When
;he trampled mud froze suddenly, the rough ridges
A^ere like knives ; and, although men cut up their
Dlankets, and bound the stripes about their feet, the
lesh was soon as unprotected as before." ^ The white
ground, in and about the camp, was everywhere marked
,vith crimson stains. High-born officers of the Hessian
'egiments in Philadelphia professed to disbelieve that
:here could be any want of shoes in an army where so
nany of the Colonels had formerly been cobblers by
;rade ; but Lafayette, who was another sort of noble-
nan, related with deep feeling how the feet and legs of
nany poor fellows were congealed and blackened till
ife could only be saved by amputation. When off duty
:he men never stirred outside their cabins, which, (as
:he young Frenchman told his wife,) were no gayer,
md far more chilly, than dungeons; and they soon
^ The Private Soldier under Washington ; Chapter 3. The account
here given is drawn from John Shreve's Personal Narrative.
298 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
became to the full as noisome. In order to purify the
air within these dwellings, pitch and tar were lighted,
and the powder of a blank musket-cartridge was burned
every morning. There was talk of supplying warmth
by piling the floors with straw, plenty of which might
be procured at no great distance from camp ; but
the means of conveyance were wanting. The horses,
worse fed even than their masters, died by hundreds
every week. A committee of Congressmen, who towards
the end of January made a visit of inspection to Val-
ley Forge, ascertained that " almost every species of
transportation was performed by men who, without a
murmur, patiently yoked themselves to little carriages
of their own making, or loaded their wood and pro-
visions on their backs." For the sick and the ailing
there was no escape except into scenes of appalling
horror. The eleven so-called hospitals at Valley Forge
were nothing better than larger, but more crowded,
hovels, where the invalids had neither proper medicines,
nor special diet; and where they lay on the bare
ground, with no covering except their own tattered
clothes, side by side with dying, and sometimes dead,
comrades.
The rate of mortality in these pest-houses may be
estimated by the condition of things which prevailed
in the most favourably situated of all the American
hospitals. Some forty miles to the north of Philadel-
phia was the village of Bethlehem, where a colony of
Moravians had been planted by Count Zinzendorf him-
self.-^ Here, for a generation back, these exemplary
people had lived in modest plenty under a strict form
of Christian Socialism. Their rule forbade them to
bear arms ; but none the less did they play an honour-
able part in the national drama. On the eve of Trenton,
in .December 1776, Washington ordered the General
Hospital of the Continental Army to be established at
1 Count Zinzendorf and his followers arrived at their future home on
Christmas-Eve in the year 1741, and passed their first night in a stable.
Thence the name of Bethlehem.
VALLEY FORGE 299
Bethlehem. The little settlement was over-filled and
over-burdened from the very first; and, by the end of
1777, it was fairly overwhelmed. In September and
October long trains of carts, laden with mangled and
helpless soldiers, arrived from the battlefields of Brandy-
wine and Germantown ; and two months later on, when
every cranny of room was already occupied, and every
ounce of wholesome food bespoken, the flood of human
misery began to pour in from Valley Forge. Officers
were nursed, "in private houses, by the matrons and
maidens ; " a great wooden shed was hastily run up in
one of the gardens ; and a three-storied barrack, which
had served as a hostel for the Single Brethren, was
made over to the rank and file. This building had
been certified for two hundred and fifty beds ; but it
was soon packed from cellar to roof with that number
thrice told. Congress, having wantonly thrown out of
gear the whole existing machinery of purchase, trans-
port, and supply, could do little or nothing to help ; and
the limited resources of the Moravian community were
altogether unequal to the strain. Dysentery, and every
form of pulmonary illness, took a large toll of life ; and
the malady which our ancestors knew by the ghastly
names of putrid, or jail, fever raged unchecked, and
almost uncombated. Four or five patients were known
to die on the same pallet of straw before it was changed.^
Of eleven junior-surgeons and mates ten took the
infection. Three house-stewards were struck down in
succession ; and six or seven of the Brothers expired
in the performance of their volunteer duties. A fine
Virginian regiment, the pride of the old Dominion, sent
forty privates into hospital, of whom three came out
alive. The Chief Pastor of the Moravians attended all
the death-beds, if such an appellation can be given to
1 Report by Doctor William Smith, of the Hospital Staff. Doctor
Samuel Finley said that the matron, the Commissariat officer, the nurses
and waiters, and all but one of the surgeons, were down with the fever.
" We lost," he declared, ** from ten to twenty of camp diseases, for one by
weapons of the enemy."
300 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
those heaps of polluted litter ; and the good man has
left it on record that, in the course of a few months,
three hundred military graves were dug in the cemetery
at Bethlehem.^
After a very short experience of Valley Forge,
Washington informed Congress that, ''unless some
great and capital change suddenly took place " in
the management of the Commissariat, the army must
inevitably perish of starvation, or disappear by wholesale
desertion. He had not adequately gauged the devotion
of his soldiers to their country, and their personal
affection for himself. All through December and
January a considerable number of privates in the
Continental regiments escaped across their own lines
by tens and twenties, and presented themselves at the
British outposts in a shocking condition of destitution
and debility. But these men were for the most part of
European nationality. Native-born Americans remained
with the colours, retaining the spirit, and, (so far as
might be,) preserving the outward semblance, of soldiers.
The men in each hut contributed articles of clothing to
make up a costume for anyone of their number who
was ordered on picket ; and, whenever an enemy was
in the neighbourhood, they turned out from their
quarters silently and resignedly, and stood under arms
during the hour of piercing cold that precedes a mid-
winter dawn. They looked up with respectful friendli-
ness to a chief who allowed himself no privileges or
comforts that were denied to others. Washington's
table was sparely furnished, and very roughly served.^
^ An Address delivered at the unveiling of a Tablet erected in
Memory of the Soldiers of the Cofttinental Army who suffered and died
at the Military Hospital of Bethlehem, by James M. Beck, of the
Philadelphian Bar; June 19, 1897.
2 Testimony is borne to the habitual frugality of Washington's military
household by a political adversary who would willingly have caught him
tripping. Two months before Valley Forge, Doctor Benjamin Rush paid
a visit to the Republican camp, and wrote as follows in his private journal :
" Dined with the Commander-in-Chief of the American army. No wine,
only grog. Knives and forks enough for only half the company. One
half the company eat, after the other had dined at the same table."
THE WINTER OF DISCONTENT 30 1
He continued to live under a tent, in the roughest of
weathers, until the army had roofed itself in ; and then
he removed his headquarters to a house which was
certainly not a palace. No one was allowed to know,
— no one will ever know, — -Washington's inmost
thoughts during that crucial period in his own, and his
country's, destiny. His heart bled for his young soldiers,
towards whom he felt as a father, but whom he was
powerless to succour in their distress ; and his peace
of mind was sorely tried by the machinations of his
political enemies. The Commander-in-Chief of the
national armies was well aware that some of the
cleverest, and all the least estimable, Congressmen were
plotting his downfall with adroit and unscrupulous
assiduity. They calumniated his motives. They dis-
paraged his abilities. They deliberately withheld from
him absolute necessaries, while demanding of him utter
impossibilities. Depressed and anxious, he was not
perturbed out of measure, inasmuch as he believed him-
self to be in direct relations with an authority which
was superior to Congress. The old ironmaster of Valley
Forge, with whom he lodged, used to relate that one
day, while strolling up the creek, he found the General's
horse fastened to a sapling. Searching around, he saw
Washington in a thicket by the road-side, on his knees
in prayer, with tears running down his cheeks. The
honest man, who was a Quaker preacher, '' felt that he
was upon holy ground, and withdrew unobserved." On
returning home he told his wife that the nation would
surely survive its troubles, because, if there was anyone
on earth that the Lord would listen to, it was George
Washington.^
The statesmen who swayed the counsels of the Re-
public had no mercy on their unhappy soldiers. They
appeared to imagine that an army, — in which the ar-
tillery horses were too few and weak to haul the cannon,
1 Lossing's field Book ; Vol. II., Chapter 5.
302 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
and the provision-waggons had no teams, and the sentries
were hardly strong enough to drag themselves between
their station on the rampart, and the door of their
wretched cabin, — was at all times, and for all purposes,
in complete and efficient marching order. Congress
could see no reason why the four or five thousand
broken and half-clothed men, who were returned as
effectives, should not forthwith advance upon Philadel-
phia, and drive out of the forts, through the city, and
across the Delaware, three times their own force of
well-fed and well-equipped veterans, supported by a
powerful and admirably commanded fleet of battleship?
Washington w^as repeatedly ordered to take the opinion
of his generals on this insane proposal ; and, within the
space of a single week, the principal officers of his army
had been known to cover, between them, at least two
hundred pages of foolscap paper in answer to the re-
iterated demands of Congress. No true soldier could
find any pleasure in explaining to ill-informed and malevo-
lent civilians his motives for recoiling from a hazardous
enterprise which they invited him to undertake ; but
Washington, and his lieutenants, faced the ungrateful
task like brave and honest men. Nathanael Greene
reminded Congress how "■ the King of Prussia, the
greatest general of the age," condemned the practice of
assaulting a body of good troops posted in villages, and
much more in regular, brick-built towns ; and how His
Majesty confessed that such an operation had once and
again ruined the best part of his own army. "A
winter's campaign," wrote Greene, " and an attack upon
the city of Philadelphia, appear to me like forming a
crisis for American liberty which, if unsuccessful, I fear
will prove her grave." Henry Knox, — the best artillery-
man, and almost the best tactician, in the Confederacy, —
pronounced it impossible, without the aid of battering-
cannon and mortars, first to storm a number of separate,
self-contained redoubts ; and then to capture, street by
street, a solidly constructed town garrisoned by many
thousand of that very infantry a few score of whom had
THE WINTER OF DISCONTENT 303
SO recently made good the defence of the Chew Mansion
against a host of enemies. His verdict, (he said,) was
" clearly, pointedly, and positively " unfavourable to the
proposed assault, because it could only result in certain
and inevitable defeat.^ The Commander-in-Chief did
not shelter himself behind the authority of his subordi-
nates, but expressed his own view freely, and, on one
particular occasion, with indignant vehemence. The
Pennsylvanian Legislature had thought fit to lecture
him for retiring into cantonments, amidst the luxuries
of Valley Forge, with as much solemnity, and circum-
stance, as if they had been a Carthaginian Senate rebuk-
ing Hannibal for having wintered in Capua. " I can
assure those gentlemen," Washington repHed, *'that it
is a much easier thing to draw remonstrances in a com-
fortable room, by a good fireside, than to occupy a cold
bleak hill, and sleep under frost and snow without
blankets. However, although they seem to have little
feeling for the naked and distressed soldiers, I feel
abundantly for them ; and, from my soul, I pity those
miseries which it is not in my power to reheve or
prevent."
Those gallant generals of the Continental army, who
had borne the brunt from the very first, were at this
moment learning what it was to pass through
" a cloud
Not of war only, but detractions rude."
If there were any three men who, faults or no faults,
had never swerved a hand's breadth in the perilous
place, they were Greene, Sullivan, and StirUng. The
first of them was now railed at as a sycophant ; the
1 " Marshal Saxe," (so General Knox wrote,) " says redoubts are the
strongest and most excellent kind of Field Fortification, and infinitely
preferable to extended lines, because each redoubt requires a separate
attack, one of which succeeding does not facilitate the reduction of the
others. Charles the Twelfth, with the best troops in the World, was
totally ruined in the attack of some redoubts at Pultowa, although he
succeeded in taking three of them."
304 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
second was called a weak, vain braggart, — a mere mad-
man under fire; and the third was classed as nothing
superior to a lazy, ignorant drunkard. That was the
description given of them by Benjamin Rush of Penn-
sylvania, a Signer who, but for the courageous exer-
tions of the warriors whom he reviled, would long ago
have dangled on a British gallows with the Declaration
of Independence suspended at his neck. The same
critic pronounced that a great man must be judged by
the company which he keeps, and that the Commander-
in-Chief of the American forces was surrounded, flat-
tered, and governed by such paltry satellites as Gener?il
Greene, General Knox, and a certain aide-de-camp of
one-and-twenty who went by the name of Colonel Alex-
ander Hamilton. James Lovell, an influential delegate
from Massachusetts, ridiculed Washington as a military
leader whose only notion of strategy was to collect
masses of troops for the sole purpose of wearing out
stockings, shoes, and breeches ; and who by this time
had " be-Fabiused affairs into a very disagreeable pos-
ture." An anonymous letter, redolent of envy, was ad-
dressed to the President of Congress by no feeble hand.
The people of America, (so the writer asserted,) were
guilty of idolatry by making a man their God. No
good could be expected from the army until Baal and
his worshippers were banished from the camp.
It would be garbling history to slur over the fact
that these ebullitions of ill-mannered, and most unpatri-
otic, rancour were accepted with favour in a quarter from
which very different conduct might have been expected.
John Adams, in obedience to the happiest inspiration
which occurred to him in the course of his long and honour-
able career, had been the earliest to suggest the nomina-
tion of George Washington as Commander-in-Chief of
the national forces ; but now, at the most critical period of
the Revolutionary War, he withheld from the general
of his own choice that support which was due to the
personal relations of the two men, and essential to the
salvation of their common country. Adams professed
THE WINTER OF DISCONTENT 305
to himself, and to the world at large, that he held
Washington in high regard ; but, when one public man
is sincerely attached to another, he will abstain from
assailing him with hackneyed and offensive party-taunts.
The stock in trade of Washington's political adver-
saries consisted in the eternal repetition of two special
charges, — that he was the object of idolatry, and that
he played Fabius Maximus Cunctator to the loss of the
American cause. The letters and speeches of John
Adams were bestrewn with allusions to that pair of well-
worn topics. He was '* sick of Fabian systems." He
had looked for vigour and audacity, and was ** weary
with so much insipidity." His favourite toast, (so he
declared,) was "a short and violent war." He hoped
that Congress would elect their generals annually ; and
then some great men would be obliged at the year's end
to go home, and serve the nation in some other capacity
not less necessary, and better adapted to their genius.
And, in the February of 1777, he went so far as to tell
Congress that he was distressed to see some of the
Members of the House disposed to worship an image
which their own hands had molten. Samuel Adams,
and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, had always believed
that military ambition was a formidable menace to the
stability of popular government; and John Adams very
soon came round to the same opinion. He expressed a
strong apprehension that to entrust the Commander-in-
Chief with the promotion of generals and colonels would
be dangerous to public liberty ; and, when the Hessians
were defeated, and the British navy foiled, in their com-
bined attack upon Fort Mercer, he thanked God that
the glory of that great success could not be ascribed to
Washington, inasmuch as ** idolatry and adulation would
have been so excessive as to have imperilled the freedom
of America." ^
^ To the end of his days John Adams never praised Washington with-
out explanations and reservations. In 1807, when Washington had lain
for eight years in the family vault at Mount Vernon, Adams enumerated
to Dr. Rush a long string of reasons which accounted for the great man's
VOL. IV. X
306 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Never were distrust and suspicion more senselessly
misplaced, or Constitutional safeguards and precautions
more absolutely superfluous. It was incredible that
the thirteen States, or any one of them, would consent
to settle down beneath the rule of a military despot ;
and, (if anything could be surer than certainty,) it was
more inconceivable still that a man, whose every action
was determined by an ever-present sense of right and
wrong, should contemplate the transcendent wicked-
ness of gripping with mailed hand the throat of his
native country. Under no circumstances whatsoever
would Washington have yielded to that temptation;
and in his eyes, moreover, it was not even a tempta-
tion. His ideal of existence was as far as possible
removed from the splendour and license of a usurper
and a tyrant, — from the power which is obtained by
crime, and can never again be surrendered with safety.
He looked wistfully forward to the conclusion of the
war as an event which would replace him in the secure
and permanent condition of a private citizen. "The
first wish of my soul," he wrote in June 1782, **is to
return speedily into the bosom of that country which
gave me birth, and, in the sweet enjoyment of domestic
happiness and the company of a few friends, to end my
days in quiet, when I shall be called from this stage."
More than one autocrat of evil fame has pleased him-
self, during an interval of leisure, by drawing Arcadian
pictures of his pursuits and aspirations ; but Washing-
immense elevation above his fellows ; — such as a handsome face ; a tall
stature, like the Hebrew sovereign chosen because he out-topped all other
Jews by a head ; an elegant form ; graceful attitudes and movements;
and a large and imposing fortune, which induced the world to give him
full credit for his disinterestedness. Washington ** possessed the gift of
silence," He had great self-command; and, whenever he lost his temper,
either the love, or the fear, of those about him induced them to conceal
his weakness from the world. Besides, (said Adams,) *' he was a Virginian.
This is an equivalent to five Talents. Virginian geese are all swans.
They trumpet one another with the most pompous and mendacious
panegyrics. The Philadelphians and New Yorkers, who are local and
partial enough to themselves, are meek and modest in comparison with
Virginian Old Dominionism." Old Family Letters^ Copied from tht
Originals for Alexander Biddle ; pages 168-170.
THE WINTER OF DISCONTENT 307
ton's passion for the quiet life was no theatrical talk.
He never was so perfectly contented, and so con-
tinuously happy, as during the fifty months which he
spent, — after peace was proclaimed, and the army dis-
banded, — at his riverside home amidst field-sports and
rural duties. It was too calm and bright to last. In
April 1789 George Washington was chosen President
of the United States ; and the sixteenth of that month
was a black day in his private diary. "■ About ten of
the clock," (he wrote,) ** I bade adieu to Mount Vernon, -
to private life, and to domestic felicity ; and, with
a mind oppressed with more anxious and painful sen-
sations than I have words to express, set out for New
York with the best disposition to render service to my
country in obedience to its calls, but with less hope of ^^
answering its expectations." '^'\>
Unrestrained by the influence, and in some cases
encouraged by the sympathy, of statesmen who ought
to have known better, the enemies of Washington set
themselves deliberately at work to drive out of public
employment the man on whom the hopes of their nation
rested, and who embodied in his own person all that
was most valuable in the national character.^ They
were a knot of vain and small-minded people. But
they had the qualities of their defects ; and their petty,
artful, and intensely unscrupulous manoeuvres were
well calculated to secure their ends. The intrigue,
which rumbled and spluttered below the surface of
affairs all through that ill-famed winter, is known in
American history as Conway's Cabal. Conway was an
Irishman by birth, who had seen much service in the
French army. He had come across the Atlantic with
a recommendation from Silas Deane ; and Congress
appointed him a Major General, to the keen vexation of
the native-born colonels whom he superseded. Their
^ " I glory in the character of a Washington, because I know him to
be only an exemplification of the American character." John Adams
wrote thus in September 1785, at the time that he was American
Minister in London.
X2
3o8 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
case was stated by the Commander-in-Chief, under
whom they had fought three campaigns, and who re-
quested to be informed why the youngest Brigadier in
the service should be put over the heads of many
gentlemen distinguished by sound judgment, and un-
questionable bravery. " Colonel Conway's merit," so
Washington went on to say, "and his importance in
this army, exist more in his own imagination than in
reality ; for it is a maxim with him to leave no service
of his own untold, nor to want anything which is to be
obtained by importunity."^ Washington, unlike his
accusers and traducers, always signed his name at the
foot of a letter ; and he was aware that foes, as well as
friends, would sooner or later know at least the sub-
stance of whatever he felt himself bound to write. The
course which he took on this occasion was no secret to
Conway, who resented it as all, except the magnani-
mous, resent public action which is unfavourable to
their personal interest; and Conway was a dangerous
man to have for an enemy.
In November, 1777, the superintendence of military
affairs was vested in a Board of War constituted of
persons not themselves members of Congress, but for
the most part in close aUiance with the ill-wishers of
General Washington who had seats in that Assembly.
The office, where this powerful conclave held its meet-
ings, at once became an exchange-mart of slanderous
gossip ; — a sort of Venetian Lion's Mouth, standing
open for the reception of denunciations pointed, one
and all, at the same conspicuous citizen. The next
three months produced a whole crop of venomous
attacks upon Washington, unsigned and unsupported
by evidence, which were addressed to, and sometimes
emanated from, prominent delegates in Congress. One
of the most outrageous of these diatribes was placed in
the hands of the Commander-in-Chief by Patrick Henry,
the Governor of Virginia. '* The anonymous letter,"
1 Washington to Richard Henry Lee, in Congress ; Matuchen Hill,
17 October, 1777.
THE WINTER OF DISCONTENT 309
Washington replied, " with which you are pleased to
favour me, was written by Doctor Rush, so far as I
can judge from a similitude of hands. This man has
been elaborate and studied in his professions of regard
for me." The object of all this subterranean corre-
spondence was to exalt Horatio Gates on the wreck of
George Washington's reputation and influence. Gates
owed the single military success of his life to Benedict
Arnold; two years later on, when he encountered Lord
Cornwallis at Camden in North Carolina, he evinced
his hopeless incapacity as a leader in battle, and
proved that he did not so much as possess the obliga-
tory courage of a soldier ; but, as the nominal victor
of Saratoga, he served the immediate purpose of Wash-
ington's adversaries, and was loaded with compliments
at Washington's expense. '* We have had," (so Gates
was told by one of his partisans,) '* a noble army
melted down by ill-judged marches, which disgrace
their authors and directors. How much are you to be
envied, my dear General ! How different your conduct,
and your fortune ! This army will be totally lost,
unless you come down and collect the virtuous band
who wish to fight under your banner." " The Northern
army," (said another admirer,) *' has shown us what
Americans are capable of doing with 2^ general 2X their
head. The spirit of the Southern army is in no way
inferior. A Gates, a Lee, or a Conway would in a few
weeks render them an irresistible body of men."
Washington was in a cruel plight. " My enemies,"
he said, " take an ungenerous advantage of me. They
know the delicacy of my situation, and that motives of
policy deprive me of the defence I might otherwise
make against their insidious attacks. They know I
cannot combat their insinuations, however injurious,
without disclosing secrets which it is of the utmost
value to conceal."^ The plan adopted by Washing-
ton's opponents was to drench him with insults, and
1 Washington to Henry Laurens, the President of Congress ; Valley
Forge, 31 January, 1778.
3IO THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
ill-services, until he should lose his self-control, and
make some false step which they would take good care
to render irretrievable. They had denied him rein-
forcements at the proper season for action ; they had
broken up the system of Transport and Commissariat
which he had slowly and painfully constructed ; and
then, when his soldiers were spent by starvation and
disease, they had publicly invited him to recommence
operations in the depth of winter, and had thrown upon
him, and upon the generals who were faithful to him,
the responsibility of declining to attack Philadelphia
under conditions which would be fatal to the American
army. Notorious and implacable hostility to the Com-
mander-in-Chief of the national forces was recognised
as the special qualification for every office the holder
of which would be in a position to annoy and thwart
him. Conway was appointed Inspector General of the
Army ; Gates was brought down from Albany to York,
and made President of the Board of War ; and his con-
fidential aide-de-camp. Colonel Wilkinson, became its
Secretary. The managers of the Cabal had by this
time ceased to be afraid of Washington. They re-
garded him as a proud and rigid man, who would not
stoop to make a party for himself in the lobbies of a
popular assembly, and whom nature had framed to be
the victim in a conflict with antagonists who were less
punctilious and chivalrous than himself. They looked
forward to the moment when his place would be too
hot for him ; they were ready to pounce upon any
expression of dissatisfaction proceeding from his pen
which could be construed, or tortured, into a request
to be relieved from office ; and, when once he had been
dismissed into private life, they felt assured that they
would be quit of him for ever.
They had mistaken their man. George Washing-
ton, with right on his side, knew very well how to
fight his own battles. He was pre-eminently a fair
dealer ; but, when liberties were taken with him, he
more than once showed himself an exceedingly formi-
THE WINTER OF DISCONTENT 3 1 1
dable customer. Though he was indifferent to gain, and
not covetous of glory, he had the strongest possible
motive for remaining at the head of the army. He was
firmly resolved, if the bullets spared him, to see his
country safe through all her troubles ; and he had no
intention of allowing a pack of self-seekers and intriguers
to hound him prematurely from the post of duty. He
possessed no skill in plots and counter-plots, no aptitude
for self-advertisement, and no inclination to the practice
of disparaging and maligning others ; but he had in
store a resistless weapon which, in the last resort, he
was entitled, and determined, to employ. Washington's
strength lay in the trust and affection of the vast majority
of his countrymen. Twice in the course of this very
year, one of his most clever and bitter enemies confessed
that the people of America adored the Commander-
in-Chief, and were fully persuaded that the war could
not be carried on without him.^ He was admired by
soldiers all the continent over, and passionately beloved
by those who had faced danger, and who were now
enduring the extremity of suffering, under his guidance,
and in his company.^ The feeling of the nation and
the army towards Washington is described in a military
report by a famous New England officer. General Knox
was remarking upon the apprehension, entertained by
some of his colleagues, that their chief would be harshly
criticised if he did not consent to order an assault upon
Sir William Howe's fortifications. " I have heard it
urged," (Knox wrote,) ''that your Excellency's repu-
tation would suffer. I freely confess that an idea of
this kind pains me exceedingly ; and, were I fully to
believe it, I should be impelled to give my opinion for
measures as desperate as I conceive the attempt to
^ Historical Notes of Doctor Benjamin Rush, for April and October,
1777.
2 "The poor soldier," (wrote Doctor Waldo,) "ate his bad food with
seeming content, and laboured barefoot through the mud and cold, with
his shirt hanging about him in strings, and a song in his mouth extolling
Washington."
312 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
storm Philadelphia. I am not of opinion that your
Excellency's character suffers in the least with the well-
affected part of the people of America. I know, to the
contrary, that the people of America look up to you as
their Father, and into your hands they trust their all,
confident of every exertion on your part for their
security and happiness ; and I do not believe there is
any man on earth for whose welfare there are more
solicitations at the Court of Heaven than for yours." ^
Washington's character, as he could not help being
aware, stood so high that he would have no need what-
ever to defend himself, if once it was brought home to
the public mind that he had been wantonly and un-
generously attacked. Fortified by this knowledge, he
took the earliest opportunity that presented itself, and
went straight to the point at once. Before many days
passed, a despatch from the Commander-in-Chief was
placed in the hands of General Gates, who opened it,
and read as follows :
"Sir,
A letter, which I received last night, contained the
following paragraph :
' In a letter from General Conway to General Gates
he says, Heaven has been determined to save your country^
or a weak General and bad counsellors would have ruined
it:
I am, Sir, your humble servant,
George Washington."
Conway had the grace to attempt no denial ; but
Gates discerned in the incident a chance of besmirching
Washington, and tainting the fair fame of a distin-
guished young officer who was deep in Washington's
confidence. The idea occurred to him that his desk
had been searched and rifled by Alexander Hamilton,
^ Opinion of Brigadier General Knox\ Park of Artillery, Camp,
Whitemarsh, 26th November, 1777.
THE WINTER OF DISCONTENT 3 13
during his recent visit to the Northern army. Gates
accordingly began to bully and bluster, calling upon
Washington, in a letter several pages long, to assist him
in the detection and punishment of the wretch, the
miscreant, and the traitorous thief, who had robbed his
portfolio. He sent a duplicate of this extraordinary
composition to the President of Congress ; and it was
through Congress that the Commander-in-Chief trans-
mitted to him an unsealed reply, giving an exact account
of all that had happened. The fact was that Colonel
Wilkinson, — who stood in the same close relation to
General Gates as Colonel Hamilton to General Wash-
ington, — had blabbed about Conway's letter to an
officer of Lord Stirling's staff; and Stirling, by friend-
ship and duty bound, had passed on the information to
the Commander-in-Chief. It was a thunderstroke for
Gates, who now saw the full extent of his own folly in
having made the story public property by his appeal to
Congress.^ He returned Washington a shabby, and
almost servile, answer; full of equivocal statements
which nobody heeded at the time, and nobody has ever
credited since ; excusing himself and General Conway,
and pouring contempt upon Colonel Wilkinson.^ When
that officer learned that he had been thrown over, he
challenged Gates to mortal combat. A hostile meeting
was arranged behind the Episcopal Church in York.
" At the appointed hour, when all had arrived on the
ground, the old general requested, through his second,
an interview with his young antagonist ; walked up a
1 Washington took care to let Gates know that he had brought the
exposure on himself. " Neither this letter," (he wrote,) "nor the informa-
tion which occasioned it, was ever directly, or indirectly, communicated by
me to a single officer in this army out of my own family, excepting the
Marquis de Lafayette, who, (having been spoken to on the subject by Gen-
eral Conway,) applied for, and saw under injunctions of secrecy, the letter
which contained Wilkinson's information." George Washington to
Horatio Gates; Valley P^orge, 4 January, 1778.
2 Two very different versions of this reply were printed and published.
It has been suggested that one was the letter which actually reached
Washington, and that Wilkinson copied the other from the original draft.
There was matter for a duel in either of them.
314 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
back street with him ; burst into tears ; called him his
dear boy ; and denied that he ever made any injurious
remarks about him."^ The pistols were returned to
their case, unused ; but Colonel Wilkinson wrote to
Congress, accusing Gates of falsehood and treachery,
and resigning his own functions as Secretary to the
Board of War.
The leaders of the baffled and detected faction had
no time to lose. In another fortnight the story would
have travelled all over the Confederacy, and their credit
and authority would be swept away in a flood of ridi-
cule and public indignation. They seized, as their last
chance, on an ingenious scheme for wounding Washing-
ton in the house of his friends. The Marquis de
Lafayette had long ago re-appeared in camp, making
very light of the hurt which he had received at Brandy-
wine. He was the most popular and cheerful of invalids,
and prouder of his first wound than if he had been
decorated by his Sovereign with the Cross of Saint Louis.
Washington had desired his physician to treat the young
man as his own son ; and he was tended with motherly
and sisterly care by the German ladies of Bethlehem.
The Moravian Brothers discoursed to him about the
folly of war, and were touched and flattered by the
interest with which he contrived to read an English
translation of the Narrative of their Greenland Mission.
Lafayette missed Germantown ; but he was back again
with the army, and on horseback, while still unable
to wear a boot. General Greene entrusted him with
a detachment of troops, at the head of which he
fought a spirited and successful action against a su-
perior force of Hessians, and earned warm praises
from the Commander-in-Chief. Lafayette had found
his hero in Washington ; but, aristocrat and ideaHst that
he was, he did not feel himself attracted or fascinated
^ This sentence is extracted from the vivid and circumstantial account
given in Mr. Fiske's Ninth Chapter. The whole correspondence may be
found in the Sixth Appendix to the Fifth Volume of The Writings of
George TVashington.
THE WINTER OF DISCONTENT 315
by the clique of wire-pullers who governed Congress.
"I see plainly," (he wrote to Washington,) **that
America can defend herself, if proper measures are
taken ; but I begin to fear that she may be lost by
herself and her own sons." Washington thanked
him for his sympathy, and bade him be of good
heart and courage. "We must not," he said, "in so
great a contest, expect nothing but sunshine. I have
no doubt that everything happens for the best, that we
shall triumph over our misfortunes, and in the end be
happy ; and then, my dear Marquis, if you will give
me your company in Virginia, we will laugh at our past
difficulties, and the folly of others." ^
The two friends were sitting together in Washing-
ton's quarters, on an evening towards the end of Jan-
uary, 1778, when a packet of documents arrived from
the Board of War. The older man read the papers, and
then passed them over to his companion without a
word. They contained Lafayette's nomination to the
independent command of the Northern army, with
Conway as his chief lieutenant ; and the Marquis was
directed to repair to the seat of government, in order
to concert arrangements for an immediate invasion of
Canada. The cup of temptation was exquisitely adapted
to the taste of him for whose acceptance it had been
compounded. Such a chance, at such a time of life,
had never fallen to one who was not a monarch, or, at
the very least, a prince of royal blood. Lafayette was
still well under one-and-twenty, — hardly older than
Charles the Twelfth when he stormed the Russian camp
at Narva, and younger than the Great Conde at the
battle of Rocroi. His lively imagination could easily pic-
ture to itself the outburst of pride and enthusiasm with
which Paris would learn the news that a high-born
French youth had avenged Montcalm, and had been
welcomed by his countrymen in Canada as their deliverer
^ Marquis de Lafayette to General Washington ; Camp, 30 December,
1777, General Washington to the Marquis de Lafayette; Headquarters,
31 December, 1777.
3l6 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
from the British yoke. It was a glittering web of
romance and glory ; and yet there was a seamy side to
the tapestry. Lafayette shrank from the thought of
entering upon a career of ambition as the rival, and the
possible supplanter, of his patron and benefactor. He
announced his intention of decUning the appointment ;
but Washington urged, and at last positively insisted,
that he should at once close with the offer. The Marquis
accordingly set out for York, where he was received
with open arms. Gates entertained him at a banquet
which appeared almost sinfully profuse and luxurious to
a guest who had come direct from the famine at Vallev
Forge. Wine and words flowed copiously ; and the
expected conqueror of Canada was congratulated and
belauded by eloquent civilians of twice his years, and
by generals who could harangue much better than they
fought. The young nobleman confined his own remarks
to practical business. He firmly, but quietly, let it be
known that he should exercise his functions in strict
subordination to General Washington, and that no con-
sideration would induce him to accept Conway as his
second in command. When the time for departure
approached he rose to his feet, reminded the company
that the most important of all the toasts had been
omitted in the generous excitement of the hour, and
gave the health of the Commander-in-Chief. A dead
silence fell upon the audience. Glasses were raised to
the lips, and set down untasted, while ** with the politest
of bows, and a scarcely perceptible shrug of the shoulders,
the new Commander of the Northern Army left the
room, and mounted his horse to start for his head-
quarters at Albany." ^
The conspirators, — unlike Cassius and Casca in the
Second Act of Shakespeare's tragedy, — had knocked
at the wrong door in their search for an accomplice.
Lafayette made it very clear to them that he had no
^ Ninth Chapter of Fiske's History. Life of General Lafayette^ by
Bayard Tuckerman. Memoires de ma main ; Jttsqu^en Vannee 1780, du
General Lafayette.
THE WINTER OF DISCONTENT 317
intention of playing Marcus Brutus to Washington's
Julius Caesar. Their designs had been penetrated;
their secret machinations had been dragged into the
daylight ; and America learned, for the first time, how
near she had come to exchanging the disinterested
services of George Washington, and Robert Morris, for
the egotism and impotence of Horatio Gates, and Ben-
jamin Rush. The Republic, (as every man of sense
now recognised with something of a shudder,) had been
threatened by a calamity more serious than the loss
of half a score of pitched battles. Conway's Cabal
became a by-word in all the States, and Conway
himself soon disappeared from American history. In
the course of the spring he was appointed to a post
which did not please his fancy, and he sent in his resig-
nation to the President of Congress in a petulant letter.^
Much to his surprise and anger, he was promptly
taken at his word, and relieved from duty. He loitered
about in Pennsylvanian society, an idle and disap-
pointed man ; giving, to all and sundry, his own ver-
sion of what had taken place during the winter, and
girding at the Commander-in-Chief in a tone which
already was hopelessly out of date. The style of his
talk was too much for the patience of General Cad-
walader, a Philadelphian of hot Welsh blood, who had
fought in most of Washington's battles, and had no
fault to find with Washington's leadership. The two
officers celebrated their next Fourth of July by a
desperate duel ; and Conway was shot through the
face. Lying on what he believed to be his death-bed,
he wrote to Washington an assurance of his "sincere
grief" for his past conduct. "My career," he con-
tinued, "will soon be over : therefore justice and truth
' " I have been boxed about in the most indecent manner. . . . What is
the meaning of removing me from the scene of action on the opening of
a campaign? I did not rlescrve this burlesque disgrace; and my honour
will not permit me to bear it. If my services are not thought necessary,
why do you not mention it to me fairly?" (iencral Lonway to President
Laurens; Fishkill, April 22nd, 1778.
3l8 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
prompt me to declare my last sentiments. You are in
my eyes the great and good man. May you long enjoy
the love, veneration, and esteem of the States, whose
liberties you have asserted by your virtues ! " ^
Washington had made a coup d'etat after his own
fashion. He did not over-ride the Constitution, or
perpetrate a single act of arbitrary and illegal violence.
Nobody was arrested, or imprisoned, or deported. There
were no military demonstrations in the streets, and no
intrusion of the soldiery into the precincts of the senate-
house. A few strong, plain words, spoken at the right
moment and in the right quarter, had roused the
nation to a sense of its peril, and had brought all his
enemies to his feet. The most damaging accusation
which, for many years to come, could be hurled against
any leading poHtician, was that he had taken part in
the attack upon George Washington. It was long re-
membered to the disadvantage of General Mifflin that
he had consented to sit upon the Board of War ; and
John Adams himself was taught by a disagreeable ex-
perience that, when he carped at the foremost man in
America, he had been playing with edged tools.^ The
defeat of Conway's Cabal marked a distinct and visible
step in Washington's upward progress. His authority
thenceforward stood on a more elevated and solid
pedestal than it had ever occupied before. "As the
silly intrigues against him recoiled upon their authors,
men began to reahse that it was far more upon his
consummate sagacity, and unselfish patriotism, than any-
1 Thomas Conway to George Washington; Philadelphia, 23 July,
1778. Conway eventually recovered from his wound. He returned to
France, and was appointed Governor of the French settlements in
Hindostan, " where, however, his imprudence is said to have greatly
injured the French cause. In 1793 he was in charge of the Royalist
army in the South of France, but was driven from that country, and died
in exile in 1800.'" Wharton's Diplomatic Correspondence \ Note on page
202 of Volume 11.
2 "That insolent blasphemer of things sacred, and transcendent
libeller of all that is good, Tom Paine, has more than once asserted in
print that I was one of a faction, in the Fall of the year 1777, against
General Washington." Autobiography of John Adams.
THE WINTER OF DISCONTENT 319
thing Congress could do, that the country rested its
hopes of success in the great enterprise which it had
undertaken." ^ The power, which Washington fore-
bore to snatch, fell into his grasp easily, and almost
automatically. No one ever again openly disputed,
and very few even privately questioned, that he, and
he alone, united the qualities and the attributes which
were essential to the general and statesman who was to
save America.^
1 This sentence is taken from the closing paragraph of Mr. Fiske's
Ninth Chapter.
2 The collapse of the opposition to Washington is depicted in a letter
from Conway to Gates, written at York in June, 1778. "I had never,"
(said Conway,) " a sufficient idea of cabals until I reached this place.
My reception, as you may imagine, was not a warm one. . . . Mr. Carroll,
from Maryland, upon whose friendship I depended, is one of the hottest
of the cabal. He told me a few days ago, ahnost literally, that anybody
who displeased, or did not admire, the Commander-in-Chief, ought not to
be kept in the army."
CHAPTER XXXV
THROUGH SPRING TO SUMMER. PHILADELPHIA BECOMES
UNTENABLE
The first step towards saving America was to preserve
the lives, and rebuild the health, of her soldiers ; and all
eyes were turned to George Washington as the prime
agent in that vital process. Congress, sincerely repen-
tant, besought him in forcible language to exert the
dictatorial powers with which he was liberally invested.
Even his personal enemies welcomed his acceptance
of authority as a relief and protection to themselves.
The troops, and more especially the Virginians, were
loud in blame of Horatio Gates, and of his allies and
abettors within the walls of Congress. Even Colonels,
(we are told,) spoke of them with the greatest con-
tempt and detestation ; and every class of oiificials,
who were entrusted with the supply of food and
clothing, '* shared largely in the profusion of curses
and ill-will of the camp." ^ The political generals on
the Board of War ceased to trifle with duties which
they had made no serious attempt to master, and left
the ground clear for the only living man who could
stand between them and their immense unpopularity.
Washington flung himself with eagerness into his
difficult and urgent task ; acting through the civil
power wherever it was practicable, and, when time
pressed, doing the work of the moment according to
his own lights, and on his own responsibility. A
Committee of Congress, under his inspiration, circulated
an appeal for help to all the States of the Union ; ^ and
1 Diary of Major Clarky for January 1778; as quoted by Louis Qinton
Hatch in The Ad7?tinistration of the American Revolutionary Army,
2 Public Papers of George Clinton-, Volume II., page 766.
320
THROUGH SPRING TO SUMMER 32 1
in the meanwhile the Commander-in-Chief fearlessly
resorted to the strong hand in order to save his army
from immediate dissolution. On the seventh February
he commissioned his ablest Heutenants to ransack the
whole area from which the British Commissariat
officers drew supplies for the garrison of Philadelphia.
Nathanael Greene collected many waggon-loads of
grain, and all the cattle, sheep, and swine, which were
tit for killing, between the Schuylkill and the Brandy-
wine Rivers ; compensating the owners with promissory
notes which in due time were paid, to the uttermost
cent, by the loyal exertions of Robert Morris. Wayne
fought and foraged in Pennsylvania, and afterwards
in New Jersey, with so much success that he was
soon familiarly known as ''Wayne the Drover." The
Loyalists adopted and used that nickname for purposes
of contumely ; ^ but it had its origin in the gratitude of
the haggard and tattered crowd which watched Anthony
Wayne ride into camp at Valley Forge behind a great
herd of fat bullocks. Greene wrote, in a private letter,
that Washington's soldiers had been a full week with-
out receiving a single ration. '' They came," (he said,)
'' before their superior officers, and told their sufferings
in as respectful terms as if they had been humble
petitioners for special favours. Happily, relief arrived
from the little collections I had made, and some others,
and prevented the army from disbanding."
Washington's station in society, and his vocation
in life, had prepared him for the emergency which
he was now called upon to meet. The owner of a
Southern plantation, living in a region of primitive
^ Major Andre's last literary production, — entitled The Cow Chase, a
satirical poem, — was sent to press the evening before the author started
from New York on his fatal mission. The concluding stanza ran as
follows :
"And now I've closed my epic strain.
I tremble, as I show it,
Lest this same warrior-drover Wayne
Should ever catch the poet."
The verses appeared in Rivington's Gazette on the day that Andre was
arrested by the American volunteers at Tarrytown.
VOL. IV. Y
322 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
communications and vast self-supporting estates, was
trained to foresight, industry, method, and self-reli-
ance from early youth upwards. " As the planta-
tion," we are told, ** was the centre of the economic
interests of the country, so the planter was the
most important individual in the community. In
his own domain his word was supreme law, and his
wishes were the governing influence. The country was
thus provided with a circle of men who showed unusual
ability in public administration. They had been
brought up to headship and leadership, and accustomed
to the most important duties of practical management." ^
In the arts of peace, — in the orderly, equable, and
successful conduct of an immense rural and industrial
establishment, — Washington had been conspicuous
among his fellows. He could turn his hands to many
sorts of work. He had been used to superintend the
manufacture, on a large scale, of all requisites and appli-
ances for rural labour and porterage, and to arrange
for the daily sustenance of a multitude of men and
animals.^ He had learned to choose qualified subordi-
nates in various departments of business, and to recognise
and trust a good man when he had found one. And
now, in the early spring of 1778, as soon as the
crying needs of his soldiers had been temporarily
satisfied, he took practical and well-considered measures
for preventing any recurrence of the administrative
scandals and calamities which had marked the previous
winter. In concert with an excellent Committee, ap-
pointed by Congress to assist him in the reorganisa-
tion of the army, he once more set up an efficient
^ Extract from an article on Virginia in an American periodical.
2 " I rose early, and took a walk about the General's grounds, which
are really beautifully laid out. He has about four thousand acres well
cultivated, and superintends the whole himself. Indeed, his great pride
now is to be thought the first farmer in America. ... It is astonishing
what a number of small houses the General has upon his estate for his
different workmen and negroes to live in. He has everything within him-
self, — Carpenters, Bricklayers, Brewers, Blacksmiths, Bakers ; and even
has a well-assorted Store for the use of his family and Servants." Diary
of John Hunter \ Mount Vernon, November 17, 1785.
THROUGH SPRING TO SUMMER 323
machinery of supply and transport. Colonel Wads-
worth of Connecticut, a man of solid ability and tried
integrity, was placed over the Commissariat ; and
General Greene, in response to Washington's earnest
solicitation, accepted the thankless post of Quarter-
master General.^ Never was a duty more reluctantly
assumed, and more faithfully and effectually performed.
Greene believed himself to be renouncing the ambition
of a lifetime when he retired from his place in the
fighting line. History, (he pathetically exclaimed,) had
never heard of a Quartermaster. In his case, however,
patriotism and self-abnegation were destined to be
splendidly rewarded. Nathanael Greene's experience,
during the next two years, in the intricate details of
military administration, was of incalculable service to
him throughout that magnificent campaign of forced
marches, and furious battles, by which he recovered for
the RepubHc three of the Southern States, and inscribed
his own name next to that of Washington on the roll of
famous Revolutionary generals.
The new officials attacked their work on system.
General Greene, in consultation with the Commander-in-
Chief and Commissary Wadsworth, made an estimate of
the food and forage which would suffice an army of
thirty thousand men for a period of twelve months. ^ He
estabHshed half a dozen principal magazines at carefully
selected points along the Delaware River. He secured a
vast quantity of horses for the Artillery and Transport.
He saw that the streams were bridged and the highways
in repair, and that the waggons were very numerous,
and in working order. He insisted that the carters and
teamsters should be fairly remunerated, and humanely
treated ; and in his dealings with farmers, tradespeople,
and mechanics he displayed the justice and the fellow-
^ "I hate the place," (so Greene wrote to Knox;) "but I hardly know
what to do. The General is afraid that the department will be so ill-
managed, unless some of his friends undertake it, that the operations of
the next campai.c^n will be in a great measure frustrate'!."
2 Washingtrm conifmted his annual rerjuirements at two hundred
thousand barrels of flour, and forty million pounds of meat.
Y2
324 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
feeling which might be expected from a man who
himself had always wrought hard for a livelihood.^
When the summer was half over, Washington told the
President of Congress that, thanks to General Greene's
active and judicious management, he himself had been
enabled, with great facility and on the shortest notice,
to move an army, half again as large as that which
fought at Brandywine, across a hundred miles of country
in rapid pursuit of the enemy. Colonel Wadsworth,
(the Commander-in-Chief added,) had been indefatigable
in his exertions, and, since his appointment to the post
of Commissary General, the supplies of provisions had
been good and ample.^
Hard times became a thing of the past at Valley
Forge. In December 1777 Field-officers had kept
Thanksgiving Day on a morsel of "exceeding poor"
meat, without flour or biscuit.^ In the spring of 1778
the allowance served out to every private was a pound
and a half of bread ; a pound of beef, or fish, or pork
and beans ; and a gill of whiskey. The regimental
doctors, practitioners of the old school, could once
again exhibit their favourite remedy of " mutton and
grog."* The cheeks of the young soldiers filled out,
their arms recovered muscle, and their step regained its
spring ; while the invalids who had survived the winter
came back to the ranks by hundreds. The return of
warm weather brought once more into evidence those
of the regimental chaplains who, during the extreme
cold, had gone home to their native States on a theory
that the men at Valley Forge were too poorly clad to
stand in the open air, and listen to preaching. One of
them was told by a soldier that he, and his comrades,
"^ Life of Nathanael Greene, Book II., Chapter i. "Before I came
into the Department," (Greene wrote,) " the country had been plundered
in a way that would now breed a kind of civil war between the Staff and
the inhabitants."
2 Washington to the President of Congress; V^^hiteplains, New York,
Augusta, 1778.
^Journal of Henry Dearborn,
* Doctor Albigence lVald6*s Diary.
THROUGH SPRING TO SUMMER 325
had sadly missed the hearing of the sermon on a Sunday.
The Reverend gentleman explained that it was their
comfort which he had in mind when he discontinued
the practice of pubhc worship. ** That is true," was
the answer ; *' but it would have been consoling to have
had so good a man among us." Deeply touched, the
clergyman reported the conversation to General Van
Cortlandt, who asked to have the soldier pointed out,
and identified him as the most notorious reprobate in
the whole battalion.^
A break-up of winter always refilled the American
regiments; and, in April and May 1778, the outburst
of personal loyalty to Washington, which was evoked
by the disclosure of Conway's Cabal, gave a notable
impulse to the recruiting. The event of Saratoga had
made the Northern and Eastern States safe for ever
and a day. The fighting men of those districts were
no longer needed for the defence of their own firesides ;
and New Englanders rallied in great numbers round
the banner of the only general, born outside New
England, whom they deemed worthy to command them.
They flocked into camp, as fast as Colonel Wadsworth
could get beef to feed them ; strapping sinewy lads, —
Asas, and Ephraims, and Jonadabs, and Abijahs,^ —
astonishing the foreign officers by their skill in the most
essential accomplishment of a soldier. The Chevalier de
Fleury reported to his government that the American re-
cruit was a different being from a French peasant, who
never killed a hare or a partridge without imminent
danger of being sent to the galleys as a poacher. Every
farmer's son in the States, (he said,) knew the use of a
fowling-piece ; and not a few of them were veterans, little
as they looked the part. " The recruits," wrote Lafayette,
^ Philip Van Cortlandt'' s Biography \ quoted in The Private Soldier
under Washington, Chapter 6.
2 In a very strong company, which marched from Linccjln in Massa-
chusetts to the Battle of Lexington, every minute-man had a Christian, — •
or, more strictly speaking, a I>iblical, — name taken out of Old Testament
history.
326 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
** have in many cases fought in the same regiments
which they are rejoining, and have seen more shots
fired than three out of four soldiers in Europe."
Soldiers, in the European sense of the term, the
American infantrymen were not. Perfection of drill was
unattainable in an army which, ever since it assembled
on Cambridge Common in the spring of 1775, had been
harried about, from pillar to post, up and down five
hundred miles of country between the River St.
Lawrence and Chesapeake Bay. The individual private
in the Continental ranks was ill set up ; he went through
his manual exercise like a rustic sportsman rather than
a professional musketeer ; and the evolutions, which he
and his comrades performed in common, were to the
last degree rudimentary. Little care had been bestowed
on tactical efficiency, and the decorative side of war
received no attention whatever. The smaller men were
placed in the front line ; but otherwise the soldiers
were not even ranged in order of stature. Lafayette,
coming straight from the parades of the Royal House-
hold at Versailles, stood gazing in courteous silence
while an American regiment took ground to its right
" by an eternal countermarch commencing on the left
flank." ^ The same operation, attempted a few weeks
afterwards in the hurry of battle, contributed largely to
the disorderly rout of Sullivan's division at Brandy-
wine.
A most curious account of the American officers
at Valley Forge has been given by an acute, but not
unfriendly, witness. The Baron de Kalb, an Alsatian
by birth, had done long and useful service in the
cidministrative departments of the French army. Soon
after the close of the Seven Years' War the Due de
Choiseul despatched him with a secret commission to
inquire into the political tendencies, and the fighting
power, of the British colonies in America. De Kalb
was better acquainted than most of Washington's
generals with the military resources of their own
1 Memoires du General Lafayette.
THROUGH SPRING TO SUMMER 327
country, and he spoke their language at least as well as
any German immigrant of the second generation. He
came across the Atlantic once again in the same ship
as Lafayette, and had a cordial reception from Congress.
The Commander-in-Chief, as de Kalb acknowledged
with becoming gratitude, made up for him '* a division
of two brigades. New Englanders all, and reputed
to be the best troops in the army." De Kalb was no
vulgar mercenary. Though now verging on seventy,
he had the health which comes from rigid temperance;
and his activity was still such that his new comrades
took him to be under fifty. He was, however, long past
the age when a man can take pleasure in expatriation ;
and he continued to wear the blue and buff uniform
from no lower motive than a sincere belief that he could
be more useful to his own Sovereign in America than in
France. His pay, always in arrear, was in paper-money
at a discount of four hundred per cent; and yet he
thankfully acknowledged that America had made
him welcome to the utmost of her ability, and he re-
quited her with the best which he had to give. In the
decisive and terrible charge of the British infantry at
the battle of Camden, when Horatio Gates ran, de Kalb
died sword in hand, with eleven bayonet-thrusts in his
body.^
Some of the American generals had conceived
a most exaggerated notion of their own importance and
dignity. They had read in French and Austrian
gazettes about the pomp and privilege which sur-
rounded the military hierarchy in an ancient and
monarchical country ; and their vanity was encouraged by
those pretentious impostors whom Silas Deane had sent
across the ocean as samples of all that was most worthy
of imitation in the European armies. On Christmas
day Baron de Kalb transmitted to the Comte de Broglie
a melancholy report of the distress which already pre-
^ In January, 1855, ^'^ngress paid Baron de Kalb's great-grandchildren
his arrears in full, both principal and interest. Three quarters of a cen-
tury had brought up the total sum to sixty-six thousand dollars.
328 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
vailed among the soldiers at Valley Forge. "The
generals, on their part," he wrote, *' do not spare them,
but take the whole guard assigned to their rank ; —
the Major Generals a lieutenant and thirty men, the
Brigadiers a sergeant and twelve men, and the Colonels
and Captains in proportion. The lowest General has
a Commissary, (whom he selects where he pleases,)
a Quartermaster, a Transport Officer, and three
Commissioners of Forage. These all have military
rank. My farrier is a captain. The day before yester-
day I went on duty. The general, who relieved me,
asked if I had paraded the men the evening before.
I told him that I never would add to the misery of the
soldier by keeping him under arms without necessity.
It has been cold for a month ; and they are so slow
in mustering that that alone consumes nearly two hours.
The general, however, sent for all his drummers and
had a Grand Parade, and a March Past, lasting three
quarters of an hour. It is a pity that soldiers, so sub-
missive, and of such excellent qualities, should be so
little cared for."
Every foreigner, whose favourable opinion was worth
having, admired the courage, virtue, and patriotism
which very generally animated the commissioned ranks
in Washington's army. Many who in private life had
been captains of industry, or active members of a
learned profession, now gave their whole mind to the
business of soldiering, and had by this time sedulously
trained themselves into good regimental officers.^
They needed to be conscientious and public-spirited, for
they were not kept in order from above. A man, who
had no self-respect, might play the shirker and the
coward unpunished, and even unrebuked. ** An officer,"'
said de Kalb, ** at the moment of an engagement quits
his regiment; tells his commandant, — or does not tell
^ " The Continental troops are not the Roiiergue Regiment ; but
neither are they the citizen militia of Paris at the time of the Fronde. . . .
Civilians, who had intelligence, have applied it to the military art.
Farmers and merchants have become passable officers." Official Report
by the Chevalier de Fleury.
THROUGH SPRING TO SUMMER 329
him, as the case may be, — that he has business else-
where ; and remains away in a neighbouring town until
the affair is over. Nobody says anything to him ; he is
paid his emoluments as before ; and he will do the same
thing again on the first opportunity. There are some
who have acted on this plan ever since the war com-
menced." ^ De Kalb himself attributed the abuses in
the American army to the meddling of Congress, and
saw no hope of improvement except in the vigorous inter-
position of the Commander-in-Chief. ** General Wash-
ington," said the old Alsatian, "■ is the most valiant and
upright man. I am convinced that he would do good if
he took more upon himself in the future than he has
taken in the past."
Congress had now burned its fingers, and had ceased
to meddle ; and the authority of the Commander-in-
Chief, so far as purely military matters were concerned,
became little or nothing short of absolute. He had a
free hand, and the leisure to use it. His own intrench-
ments at Valley Forge defied assault ; and he could not
attempt anything with advantage against Sir William
Howe as long as the British troops lay secure behind
their line of forts, and the British fleet had control of
the Delaware River. For the first time since Washington
had taken over the command, he saw an opportunity
for getting his army into shape. If any European nation
really existed whose example might be quoted in excuse
for the irregularities and absurdities which prevailed in
the American camp, that nation most assuredly was not
Prussia ; and exactly at the right moment a Prussian
veteran appeared upon the scene. Baron von Steuben
had served with King Frederic's staff in every campaign
of the Seven Years' War ; and, since the Peace of
Hubertsburg, he had lived on his estate in Suabia when-
1 A familiar type, during the first thirty months of the Revolutionary
war, was the officer who remained away from the front, haunting the
taverns of Albany and Boston for weeks together, bragging about his
own performances unrler hre, and wearing his hat at the angle known
in the British army as **the damn-my-eyes cock."
330 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
ever he was not occupied with the duties of those lucra-
tive, and very incongruous, employments which a
German nobleman might hold in the easy days of the
pre- Revolutionary epoch. He was Lieutenant General
in the Baden army, and Grand Marshal at the court of
the Prince of Kohenzollern Heckingen ; a knight of the
Order of Fidelity; and, (among his other vocations,) a
canon of the Church. The King of Sardinia, and the
Emperor of Germany, had endeavoured to attract him by
splendid offers ; but he had his own political opinions,
and was silently determined never to draw his sword
again except in the cause of liberty.
Von Steuben arrived at Valley Forge in February
1778, and was soon afterwards appointed Inspector
General of the Army in place of Conway, who had
made the post a sinecure. On reaching his quarters
the Baron found an officer and twenty-five men stationed
at the door as a guard of honour, whom he promptly
sent about their business. His next step was to draft six
or seven score of soldiers, from various line battalions,
as a body-guard for the Commander-in-Chief ; and then
he proceeded, in the old Potsdam style, to put this
detachment through the Potsdam discipline. He rose
at three every morning ; drank his coffee, and smoked
his pipe ; and got on horseback by sunrise. He was,
(we are told,) an ardent advocate of direct personal
contact between officer and private, and had no patience
with the British custom of making over the awkward
squad to sergeants.^ He might constantly be seen in
face of a line of soldiers, with a semicircle of captains
and lieutenants behind him, giving the word of com-
mand, short and sharp, and going through the motions
with a musket. At first he delivered his instructions
with an interpreter at his side, who, according to the
military legend, was particularly enjoined to swear at
delinquents in their mother tongue ; but von Steuben
very soon contrived to make himself understood when
^ The Private Soldier under Washington^ Chapter i.
THROUGH SPRING TO SUMMER 33 1
he had anything of importance to communicate.^ Within
a fortnight, (according to his own statement,) his com-
pany " were perfect in their manual exercise ; had
acquired a military air ; and knew how to march, to
form column, to deploy, and to execute some little
manoeuvres with admirable precision." Then he took
another batch in hand, and sent back their predecessors
to be teachers and fuglemen in their respective regi-
ments throughout the army. Before many weeks had
elapsed the President of Congress received a most re-
assuring letter from his son at Valle}^ Forge. ** Baron
Steuben," wrote Colonel Laurens, **is making sensible
progress with our soldiers. The officers seem to have
a high opinion of him, and discover a docility from
which we may augur the most happy effects. It would
enchant you to see the enlivened scene of our Campus
Martius. If Mr. Howe opens the campaign with his
usual deliberation, we shall be infinitely better prepared
to meet him than ever we have been."^ Mr. Howe
and Sir Henry Clinton, between them, gave von Steuben
all the spring, and half the summer, to complete the
task which he had undertaken ; and the American
soldier thenceforward superadded an exact discipline
to the cleverness of his nation, and the courage of his
race. No more thorough a piece of work, in that depart-
ment of human affairs, was ever again accompHshed
until Sir John Moore formed and trained for battle, at
the camp of ShorncUffe, the regiments which will always
be known to fame as Lord Wellington's Light Division.^
^ Von Steuben learned to talk vigorous P'nglish, and the anecdote-
books are full of his sayings. When a shell fell near him at Yorktown,
he jumped into a trench, followed closely by Anthony Wayne, who tum-
bled over him. Perceiving that it was his own Brigadier, the Baron
said : " I always knew you were a brave officer, but I did not know you
were so perfect in every point of duty. You cover your general's retreat
in the best manner possible."
2 John Laurens to Henry Laurens ; Headquarters, Valley Forge, April
I, 1778.
^ During the three earliest years of the war from five to eight thousand
American muskets had disappeared annually. Most of them were carried
away as keepsakes by departing soldiers. It was a custom which would
332 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Von Steuben was remoulding the infantry ; General
Knox could be trusted to restore the efficiency of the
artillery ; and Washington himself took measures to
remedy the most glaring of all the defects in the com-
position of his army. If he had begun the campaign
with a respectable force of cavalry, numerous enough
to cover his own front and watch the movements of the
enemy, his advance-guard need never have been sur-
prised at Paoli, and even Brandywine might have told
another tale. Such a force the Commander-in-Chief
now made it his special business to create. Everything
which concerned the enlistment, the equipment, and,
(above all,) the mounting of his troopers was a laboui
of love, performed in congenial company. Major Henry
Lee was a young man of high promise, and the son of
an old flame of George Washington, who had been
early, and always, susceptible to the gentle passion until
his affections were irrevocably fixed by marriage. Al-
ready known for a dashing leader of partisans, Henry
Lee soon reached supremacy in every branch of soldier-
ship ; and in his late manhood he became the father of a
hero who holds rank among the very greatest soldiers of
the modern world. ^ He was a native of Washington's
own county, — a brother Virginian with whom, when
the day's work was done, the General liked well to sit,
and talk horses.^ Major Lee enrolled, and commanded,
two troops of light dragoons ; and a third troop was
added before operations recommenced. The American
not have endeared itself to Frederic the Great ; and, in the first twelve
months of von Steuben's Inspectorship, fewer than twenty fire-arms were
lost to the nation. Fiske's Revolution ; Chapter X.
1 Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general, was born when Henry Lee
was long past fifty.
2 " I found," wrote Stuart the artist, " that it was difficult to interest
Washington in conversation while I was taking his portrait. I began on
the Revolution, — the battles of Monmouth and Princeton; but he was
absolutely dumb. After a while I got on horses. I had touched the
right chord." Washington was then President of the United States, and
residing in Philadelphia, where he had a stable of six and twenty. He
used to say that he asked but one good quality in a horse, to go along ;
for he could always keep his saddle, provided the animal kept upon its
legs.
THROUGH SPRING TO SUMMER 333
cavalry had small beginnings, and never attained very
large dimensions ; but it was a serviceable instrument
of war from the first moment, and ultimately it played
a memorable part in deciding the campaign which pre-
served Georgia and the Carolinas to the Union.
Before Lafayette was many weeks older he returned
to Valley Forge, disgusted and disillusioned. He had in-
formed his wife, with pardonable exultation, that he had
been appointed to the independent command of a small
but sufficient army, and honoured by a mission to liber-
ate New France from British oppression.^ The bastard
soldiers on the Board of War, whose one and only object
was to sow jealousy between him and Washington, and
who had made no preparations whatever for an attack
upon Canada, had told the Marquis that he would have
at his disposal at least three thousand good troops,
equipped for a winter march. Horatio Gates expressly
assured him that General Stark had called out the New
England militia, and would by that time have destroyed
the hostile flotilla at St. John's in the Sorel River. When
Lafayette arrived at Albany he found just twelve hun-
dred ill-fed, unpaid, and half-naked soldiers ; and the
Green Mountain Boys, like people of sense, flatly re-
fused to stir from home. The plain truth was, that
Stark, and all his New Hampshiremen, infinitely pre-
ferred the English to the French as their neighbours
on the other side of the border. A handful of Quebec
Whigs, with the inveterate and incurable self-deception
of the political exile, promised the young Frenchman
that, as soon as ever he crossed the frontier, the Cana-
dians would rise to a man against King George and his
government. But Benedict Arnold and Benjamin Lin-
coln wrote from their sick-beds to remonstrate against
the proposed expedition. The views of those admirable
soldiers were enforced by the sound judgment, and the
unequalled local knowledge, of Philip Schuyler ; and
Congress, in terms handsomely chosen to show their
sympathy with Lafayette under his disappointment,
1 Lafayette a Madame Lafayette ; Yorck, 3 Fevrier, 1778.
334 "^^^ AMERICAN REVOLUTION'
ordered him to suspend his northward movement, and
rejoin Washington's army.
The Americans had been wise in time. A very warm
reception was awaiting them in Canada, where Sir Guy
Carleton had assembled all the British and German
regiments, and had concentrated them in an advanced
position at the actual point of danger. They were at
liberty to bestow their undistracted attention upon the
invader ; for the French inhabitants were tranquil and
contented, and by no means unfriendly to their rulers.
Carleton's habitual respect for their religion, their lan-
guage, and their social institutions, and the vigilance
with which he suppressed every attempt to insult or
ill-use them, had won their affection for himself, and
secured their loyalty to the Crown. When the peril
was over he sailed for England, superseded from office,
and in disgrace, — as far as an honest man could be dis-
graced by incurring the displeasure of such a minister
as Lord George Germaine. Sir Guy Carleton had
saved Canada by pursuing the exact reverse, in every
particular, of the infatuated policy which alienated, and
lost to the empire, our thirteen American colonies.
In the course of that same spring Charles Lee
returned to the Republican lines from an exceedingly
uncomfortable captivity. Sir William Howe had threat-
ened to try him by Court Martial as a deserter. When
he wrote to expostulate, his letters were sent back to
him unopened, and enclosed in an envelope addressed
not to "General Lee," not even to "Charles Lee, Es-
quire," but bearing the ominous superscription of " Lieu-
tenant Colonel Lee," which was his rank in the British
service. He had been placed under close arrest, and
perhaps was only saved from a worse fate by the
emphasis of Washington's remonstrances. His fellow-
countrymen, alarmed for his safety, made repeated
efforts to have him included in the negotiations for a
barter of prisoners. Congress was prepared to bid as
high for him as five Hessian field-officers, with an
English colonel thrown in ; and he was eventually
THROUGH SPRING TO SUMMER 335
released in exchange for a warrior who, it must be ad-
mitted, very fairly represented Charles Lee's genuine
market value. General Prescott had, twice over and
very easily, been made prisoner by the Americans, who
came to regard him as a convenient circulating medium
for buying back their own captured generals.^ Towards
the middle of April, Lee arrived at York, on a very bad
horse, with his vanity still as alert, and his literary style
as eccentric, as ever. He wrote to Washington that he
had lately been studying Marshal Saxe and Machiavel's
Institutions, and that he now understood the art of
drawing up an army in the field better than almost
any man living. "In short," he said, *' I am mounting
on a hobby-horse of my own training, and it runs away
with me. You must excuse me, therefore, if I could
not forbear recommending the beast to some members
of Congress." Washington took this communication very
lightly. He congratulated Lee on his restoration to
freedom, and thanked him for his letter. " The con-
tents," he added, " shall be the subject of conversation
when I have the pleasure of seeing you in circum-
stances to mount your hobby-horse; which will not, I
hope, on trial be found quite so limping a jade as the
one on which you set out for York." ^
Mrs. Washington had joined her husband at Valley
Forge before the worst period of misery was over.
Like Frederic the Great, during his seven years of
marches and bivouacs, George Washington never resided
at his home while the war was in progress ; but, unlike
that monarch, he had a wife whose companionship was
1 Prescott, early in the war, when attacked by Richard Montgomery
on the river St. Lawrence, had tamely surrendered himself, a detachment
of British soldiers, and eleven armed vessels for the safety of which he was
responsible. He was exchanged for Sullivan, and placed in command on
Rhode Island, whence he was taken out of his bed by a party of American
raiders, and carried to the mainland in his night shirt. Prescott is
remembered as a tyrannical, violent-tempered man, — a terror to the
revolted colonists everywhere except in battle. He was in all respects a
different personage from Robert Prescott, then a colonel in Howe's army,
afterwards a general of renown, and a humane and capable administrator.
2 Washington to Charles Lee ; Valley Forge, 22 April, 1778.
336 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
essential to his happiness, and who was not kept from
his side by any consideration of danger to herself. She
said on one occasion that she always heard the first,
and the last, guns of every campaign ; ^ and now, by
the middle of February, she was settled in the old
Quaker's stone house at the angle between the ravine
and the river. "The General's apartment," she wrote,
'*is very small. H3 has had a log cabin built to dine
in, which has made our quarters much more tolerable
than they were at first." The cabin has disappeared ;
but the house remains, with two little ground-floor
rooms, and a deep east window, beneath the sill
of which is a cavity where Washington kept hi'*
secret papers. Many years afterwards an ancient lady
who, as a girl of sixteen, attended Mrs. Washington
on her errands of mercy in that camp of sorrow,
used to say that she had never known so busy a
woman. During the whole of every week-day her
sitting-room was filled with the wives of officers, patch-
ing garments, knitting stockings, and cutting out shirts,
for the soldiers ; and she herself, in the intervals of her
needle-work, was continually to be seen entering the
regimental huts with a basket on her arm, to comfort
the sick with wholesome food prepared by her own
hands, or to pray '*in a sweet solemn voice" beside
the straw pallets of the dying.^
When times mended, and a rude abundance pre-
vailed in the cantonments, Washington, who had the
planter's inclination to hospitality, began once more
to keep open house for as many guests as his dining-
shed would accommodate.^ It was not a stiff or a
noiseless meal ; for his " family," as he called them, were
a vivacious crew. Alexander Hamilton carved at the
1 Life of Catherine Schuyler^ by Mary Gay Humphreys ; Chapter ii.
2 Life of Martha Washington^ by Anne Hollingsworth Wharton;
Chapter 7.
3 From the moment that the war ended there was a constant stream
of visitors at Mount Vernon. The master of the house " recorded, as a
noteworthy fact, after they had been at home more than a year, that for
the first time he and Mrs. Washington dined alone."
THROUGH SPRING TO SUMMER 337
head of the table, leading the laughter, and providing,
in very superior quality, the homage which lady-guests
have a right to expect in a military household ; while
Baron von Steuben, whom the aides-de-camp venerated
as a sort of jovial Mentor, recounted in queer and
graphic English his manifold experiences of courts, and
camps, and cities. No stranger, with any reasonable
claim upon Mrs. Washington's good-nature, was turned
away unfed, and, (in cases of real distress,) uncheered
and unassisted. A party of Tory Quakeresses from
Philadelphia, on the way south to visit their banished
husbands, received much attention from the Com-
mander-in-Chief and his wife, whom they gratefully
described as ** a pretty, sociable kind of woman." ^
She certainly was pretty, and noticeably plump, which
at her age were not incompatible. As spring advanced,
the American matrons at Valley Forge formed a large
and, in a quiet way, a distinguished company. Lady
Stirling was there ; and handsome, cheerful Mrs. Knox,
of whom it has been said that she followed the army
like the drum. The sight of them aroused sad and
longing thoughts in the breast of Lafayette ; although
he carefully and loyally explained in his letters home
that he did not envy his colleagues their wives, but the
power of having their wives with them.
Mrs. Nathanael Greene, who had used her oppor-
tunities when a school-girl, talked the French of a
Rhode Island academy so courageously that her general's
narrow quarters were crowded of an evening with
foreign officers. There was no space in the hut for
dancing, and no card-table ; since all games of chance
were strictly prohibited by Washington's orders. ^ " But
there was tea and coffee, and pleasant conversation
"^ Journal of Mrs. Henry Drinker \ April 6, 1778.
2 " Gaming of every kind is expressly forbidden, as being the founda-
tion of evil, and the cause of many a brave officer's ruin. Games of exer-
cise for amusement may not only be permitted, but encouraged."
Circular from the Commander-in-Chief to the Brigadier Generals^
Morristown, May 26, 1777. Playing cards had been specifically mentioned
in a previous General Order.
VOL. IV. Z
338 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
always, and music often, — no one who had a good voice
being allowed to refuse a song." ^ The hostess had still
many years of life before her ; but her brave husband
was taken from her very shortly after the triumph of
the cause for which he had so stoutly fought. His
place in the estimation of the American people is in--
dicated by the deference which everywhere attended
his widow. Whenever she visited Mrs. Washington,
the President, however deeply he was engaged, always
made a point of handing her to her carriage himself ;
and her humbler countrymen paid her the same com-
pliment that they paid to their President's wife, and
insisted upon calling her Lady Greene. American
women have since then come into very much grander
titles ; but none of those titles are more honourable
than hers, or will be longer and more respectfully
remembered.
On May Day, 1778, it was known in camp that
Treaties of Commerce and Alliance between the Crown
of France, and the Government of the United States,
had been signed in Paris. Most of the soldiers were
politicians enough to appreciate the full significance
of the tidings that their Republic had been recognised
as one of the Family of Nations by the second naval
and military power in the world. Washington, in a
General Order, counselled his followers to direct their
gratitude to the quarter where, in his own belief, grati-
tude was due. " It having pleased the Almighty Ruler
of the universe to defend the cause of the United
American States, and finally to raise us up a powerful
friend, among the princes of the earth, to establish our
liberty and independence upon a lasting foundation, it
becomes us to set apart a day for gratefully acknow-
ledging the Divine goodness, and celebrating the im-
portant event which we owe to his Divine interposition."
So the proclamation ran ; and, on the following Thurs-
day, the troops were under arms by dawn. Prayers
1 The Life of Nathanael Greene^ by George Washington Greene;
Book Second, Chapter 25.
THROUGH SPRING TO SUMMER 339
were offered, and the customary Thanksgiving Sermon,
which has been happily called the Te Deum of New
England, was preached at the head of every brigade.
Baron von Steuben, with his five assistants in his
train, passed slowly through the regiments, inspecting
weapons and accoutrements, and giving a finishing
touch to the dressing of the ranks. ^ The whole army
advanced, in review order, towards the high ground
from which Washington, accompanied by Nathanael
Greene in his unaccustomed character of a quasi-
civilian, surveyed the imposing spectacle. The men
were still poorly clothed ; ^ but they stepped along
with firelocks sloped and heads erect, looking, for the
first time, like the soldiers that they were. Thirteen
cannon-shots were discharged, slowly and successively ;
and a running fire passed up and down from right to
left, and left to right, along a line of ten thousand
muskets. There was huzzaing for the King of France,
and for the Friendly European Powers, followed by a
storm of cheers in honour of the American Nation. A
banquet of fifteen hundred covers stood ready beneath
an amphitheatre of tent-cloth, to which the officers
marched in procession, thirteen abreast, with arms
closely linked, as an emblem of the union of their
thirteen States. It was a counter-pageant to the Mes-
chianza, without the tissue and the spangles, but
with more of meaning. The rank and file obtained
their share of the ^ood things which had been pro-
1 Life of Nathanael Greene ; Book Third, Chapter 2. The account of
Valley Forge, in Mr. George Washington Greene's volumes, is interesting
from first to last.
'^ The Clothing Department continued to be administered by the Board
of War. " An application for linen for thirteen thousand shirts, and
fifteen thousand overalls, was answered by a promise of thirty thousand
yards. Some three months afterwards, thirteen hundred yards arrived;
but it proved so poor that it was all rejected." Three hundred hats
were so small that th<.-y had to be re-sold, and blankets thought to be
large enough for a pair of men were found too narrow for one. Not until
November, i 778, was Washington able to inform the President of Congress
that his soldiers had the clothes which they needed. The Administration
of the Revolutionary Army ; Chapter 6. Washington Correspondence.
Z 2
340 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
vided. Continental soldiers, under arrest for a pecca-
dillo, were set at liberty to enjoy the day ; and a spy
from the hostile lines, who had been detected and
seized, was. dismissed unharmed after giving a promise
that he would faithfully recount to his employers
everything which he had heard and witnessed. Man-
kind was welcome to learn that America was once
again, and better than ever, armed at all points for the
ordeal of battle.
The country felt an unwonted sense of strength, and
an instinctive confidence that the worst was over.
Everybody praised Washington ; and Washington was
careful to remind his fellow-citizens how very much of
the credit should be allotted to others besides himself.
A European admirer had sent him some epaulettes and
sword-knots, for presentation to those generals whom he
thought fit to honour; and he accordingly gave them
to Arnold and Lincoln, as a mark of his regard for two
brave men whose shining conduct, at the most critical
of emergencies, had been rewarded by very severe
wounds, and an almost total absence of official notice and
commendation. 1 Still less did George Washington for-
get what he owed to the army which had gone through
the season of affliction at Valley Forge. Taking an
early opportunity for paying his tribute to that humble,
but invaluable, military virtue which, in the judgment
of foreign critics, was the peculiar characteristic of
the American private, he thanked his troops for their
" uncomplaining patience " during the recent scarcity
of provisions in camp. Their conduct, (he said,) had
shown that they possessed in an eminent degree the
spirit of soldiers, and the magnanimity of patriots. His
words went home to many hearts ; for the dismal reports
which arrived from the encampment on the Schuylkill
^ Towards the end of December, 1777, ^ surgeon in the Continental
army sent a report of their condition from the hospital at Albany.
"General Lincoln," he said, "is in a fair way of recovery. He is the
patient Christian. Not so the gallant Arnold ; for his wound, though
less dangerous in the beginning than Lincoln's, is not in so fair a way of
healing. He abuses us as a set of ignorant pretenders."
PHILADELPHIA BECOMES UNTENABLE 341
River, during those black months, had brought alarm
and anguish to countless families. Americans were pre-
eminently a domestic people ; and, in every age of the
world, the favourite son of the household is the son who
has gone to the war.^ The proud and mournful tradi-
tions of that winter survived, for many a long year, in
every township of every State, and have taken a firm
hold on the imagination of posterity. Nations, like the
readers of fiction, love a sad story which ends well ; and
the name of Valley Forge will never cease to be associ-
ated with the memory of sufferings quietly and stead-
fastly borne, but not endured in vain.
On the twenty-fourth of May Sir William Howe
relinquished the command to Sir Henry Clinton, and
embarked for England. " I am just returned," wrote
Captain Andre, *' from conducting our beloved General
to the water-side, and have seen him receive a more
flattering testimony of the love and attachment of his
army than all the splendour and pomp of the Meschi-
anza could convey to him. I have seen the most
gallant of our officers, and those whom I least suspected
of giving such instances of their affection, shed tears
while they bade him farewell." Howe did not wear his
heart on his sleeve ; and he never, either by speech or
letter, gave an indication of the feelings with which he
took his final departure from that land of baffled hopes
1 " Plus amat e natis mater plerumque duobus
Pro cujus reditu, quod gerit arma, timet."
So, eighteen hundred years before, the Roman poet had written; and so
American mothers felt, — all the more because they understood and loved
the cause which their sons were defending. The sentiment was reflected
in the popular art of the hour. One of the many pictures inspired by
this motive is described in a sale-catalogue of the Revolutionary period.
A young militiaman, just returned from his first campaign, was represented
sitting in the kitchen of a log-house, " his clothes torn and ragged," while
a meal was prepared for him by the negro servants. ** Facing him sits his
old mother, and behind his chair his sister leans. Next to her is another
sister, with a sucking child at her breast, listening attentively ; the
passions that agitate their minds extremely well expressed in their coun-
tenances."
342 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
and lost opportunities.^ His troops, who had never
experienced defeat while fighting under his own eye,
admired him as enthusiastically, and believed in him as
imphcitly, as ever.
"Chained to our arms, while Howe the battle led,
Still round these files her wings shall Conquest spread.
Loved though he goes, the spirit still remains
That with him bore us o'er these trembling plains.
On Hudson's banks ^ the sure presage we read
Of other triumphs to our arms decreed ;
Nor fear but equal honours shall repay
Each hardy deed where Clinton leads the way."
These martial verses from a soldier's pen, which at
all events were as good as much that then passed for
poetry among civilians in England, faithfully expressed
the aspirations of a most valiant army. But the
prophecy did not meet with fulfilment. The tide of
British conquest had already attained its utmost limit,
and even the retention of Philadelphia was to the last
degree precarious. The foresight of Washington, and
the supreme importance of the reasons which had led
him to take an audacious resolution, and to persevere
in it under appalling difficulties, were now patent to
the world. People had wondered, in some cases mock-
ingly and contemptuously, at his pertinacity in clinging
to Valley Forge " as if he had bought the freehold of
it ; " but nobody wondered now. The motives of his
strategy had been described to the British ministry by
Joseph Galloway, as sagacious a Loyalist as any in
America. General Washington, (this gentleman wrote,)
1 A brief and telling account of the principal occasions upon which
destruction must have overtaken the Americans, if Sir William Howe
had been alive to kis chances, is incidentally given in a letter from
Washington to Governor Trumbull. The passage is quoted in the Second
Appendix at the end of the volume.
2 This was an allusion to the capture, by Sir Henry Clinton, of two
strong forts overlooking the Hudson River. The affair took place on the
sixth October, 1777.
The lines were written by Captain Andre as part of "an address
intended to have been spoken at the Meschianza by a Herald, holding in
his hand a Laurel-wreath." The Gentleman! s Magazine for August
1778.
PHILADELPHIA BECOMES UNTENABLE 343
had fixed his winter-quarters only two-and-twenty miles
from Philadelphia, with a design to command the rural
districts of Pennsylvania ; to have access to the Jerseys,
and keep up his communication with the eastern prov-
inces ; to secure his retreat over the Susquehanna ;
and, until then, to cut off supplies from the English
garrison in the city. Washington, as a matter of fact,
had no more idea of retreating over the Susquehanna
than over the Mississippi ; but, in all other respects,
Galloway accurately divined his intentions.
It was a bold and a sound plan which, before the
end of May 1778, had developed itself into triumphant
performance. Planted on the flank of his enemy, — just
so far away as to be secure against surprise, but
sufficiently near to profit by every opening for aggres-
sive action, — Washington had, by this time, regiments
enough to guard his own camp, and to dominate Penn-
sylvania. His flying columns swept the more remote
townships clear of food and fodder, and left a bare
larder for the British Commissariat. His light dragoons,
few in number, but riding choice horses which were
regularly and plentifully fed, suppressed the traffic be-
tween the suburban farmers, and their customers in the
city, with complete immunity to themselves.^ Henry
1 It was not easy to force the Americans to battle against their will.
They had always been able to take very good care of themselves as
individuals, and they had now learned to manoeuvre in masses. To-
wards the latter end of May two thousand infantry had been detached
from their main army under the charge of Lafayette. They were sur-
rounded by more than twice their own number of royal troops; and Sir
William Howe made so sure of effecting their capture that, before leaving
Philadelphia for the front, he invited a party of ladies to meet the French
Marquis at supper. But the Continental officers took the alarm just in
time, and extricated themselves, and their artillery, from an almost
hopeless position with extraordinary coolness and agility.
Earlier in the year news came to Philadelphia that Harry Lee was
lodged in a solitary dwelling, with a very slender escort. Emulous of
Colonel Harcourt's celebrated exploit, nearly two hundred royal dragoons
made a night-march of twenty miles, and beset the house in which the
American cavalryman lay ; but they found on this occasion that they had
to do with the wrong sort of Lee for their purposes. Though he had not a
soldier for each window, the young fellow made so stout a fight that he
beat off his assailants in a style which delighted Washington.
344 ^^-^ AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Lee and his cavaliers very soon made the neighbour-
hood too hot for small parties of English and German
foragers ; and, when the Royal troops went forth to
collect provisions, they seldom ventured to march in less
strength than a full brigade. Their generals reluctantly
acknowledged that Pennsylvania, to all intents and
purposes, had become a hostile province ; while New
Jersey blazed like a fiery furnace of revolution on the
eastern shore of the Delaware. The force commanded
by Sir Henry Clinton was no longer a field-army with
unfettered liberty of movement, subsisting on the
resources, and protecting the loyalty, of the Central
Colonies. It was the isolated, the beleaguered, and,
(so far as access by dry land was in question,) the
jealously and closely blockaded garrison of a single city;
and a garrison, moreover, which would very soon be
needed elsewhere. The Comte d'Estaing, accompanied
by twelve French sail of the line, and a batch of frigates
with four thousand good French infantry on board,
might be expected off the American coast before the
summer was much older. All through May and June
he was making the best of his way, (though that best was
very bad,)across the Atlantic Ocean; and the result might
be extremely serious if he should arrive in New York
Bay while the British army at Philadelphia was distant
a hundred and twenty miles by road, and the British
squadron in the Delaware three hundred miles by water.
Philadelphia was henceforward reduced to depend
on the Delaware for the transport of food as exclu-
sively as London depended on the Thames for coal.
It was a difficult matter to protect the navigation of
a river when both its shores were in the possession
of a vigilant enemy. In the daytime, Washington's
artillery officers brought down cannon to judiciously
selected points along the course of the channel ; and,
when night fell, the Jerseymen put off in skiffs to the
attack of any cattle-ship, or string of flour-barges,
whose crew kept a bad watch. But the forty leagues
of open sea, between the Capes of the Delaware and
PHILADELPHIA BECOMES UNTENABLE 345
Sandy Point, were the most hazardous stage of the
voyage from New York to Philadelphia ; for the Ameri-
can privateers were driving a roaring trade. To range
the ocean under a letter of marque was an excitement,
and almost a pastime, for those fishermen and ship-
masters of the Eastern States whom, in an evil hour for
British commerce, the British Parliament had banished
from the exercise of their accustomed callings. Some
among them, in the quietest of times, had never been
averse to an occasional turn at smugghng ; and they
now fastened eagerly upon an occupation which had
an appearance of reconciling the claims of patriotic
duty with the attractions of an adventurous life, and
the prospect of enormous gains. A very small company
of ill-armed and half-manned American vessels captured,
in one month, nine large merchantmen, with cargoes
valued at a hundred and forty thousand pounds sterling.
The zest of success was sharpened by the varied, and
very uncertain, character of the spoil. Two lucky
privateers, — for they usually cruised in couples, —
brought into port three West Indiamen, carrying more
than twenty thousand dollars in specie, and above a
thousand hogsheads of sugar ; fifty pipes of the best
Madeira wine ; and a very fine turtle destined for Lord
North, '' with his Lordship's name nicely cut on the
shell, which was yesterday presented by the captain
to the worthy President of the American Congress." ^
Everything on board the prizes was money, or money's
worth ; and not a few of them were laden with warlike
stores which were despatched straight from the quay-
side to Washington's camp. The inventories of the
booty included great quantities of arms and ammuni-
tion, besides many hundred suits of military clothing.
Seven ship-loads of provisions, sent from England and
Ireland for the use of the royal troops, were taken off
the coast of Rhode Island at a single haul. It was
reckoned that the Americans, by the end of 1778, had
captured nearly a thousand merchant-ships, valued at
1 American Archives.
346 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
about two million pounds ; ^ and the perils of the sea
were enormously enhanced as soon as French frigates
made their appearance in the Western waters.^
The military situation at Philadelphia had become
very bad ; and, to those who looked below the surface,
the social and political conditions, which prevailed in
the district occupied by the royal army, were of still
more gloomy omen for the royal cause. Sir William
Howe's campaign had been undertaken on the theory
that a great majority of Pennsylvanians, and Mary-
landers, and New Jerseymen were sincere well-wishers
to the English Crown, — ready and willing to declare
themselves against the Revolution as soon as Washing-
ton was defeated, and driven outside their borders.
From that moment forward the rich and populous
Central Colonies, administered by a stable and vigorous
government of prominent Loyalists, would be a citadel
of royalism in the sense that New England was a citadel
of rebellion. But these fair hopes were soon dispersed.
The relations between the British generals, and the
American Tories, were uncomfortable, and mutually
unprofitable, from the very first ; and both parties
grew less and less satisfied with each other as the war
went on.
Sir William Howe's cherished project for increasing,
and perhaps even doubling, the strength of his army
1 The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1 660- 1 783; by Captain
A. T. Mahan ; Chapter 9.
2 Those perils occupy much space in Lord Carlisle's New York
journals and correspondence. The packet which was to bring him letters
from his wife never reached its destination. "The transport," he wrote,
" with all my things, I suppose is also taken ; and Monsieur d'Estaing will
go about in my carriage, and drink all my wine," When a colonel, who
bored him, sailed for England, the fastidious young nobleman professed
to regret that the obnoxious officer would fall into the hands of French
or Americans, and not of Turks; since the vulgar notion was that the Turks
cut out the tongue of those whom they made their prisoners. There was a
period in the summer of 1778 during which naval opinion in New York
estimated the chances against an unarmed ship reaching England at
three to one. The Manuscripts of the Earl of Carlisle, preserved at
Castle Howard. Historical Manuscripts Commission ; Fifteenth Report,
Appendix, Part VI,
PHILADELPHIA BECOMES UNTENABLE 347
by the aid of local levies began, and ended, in flat dis-
appointment. "In May ijyS," (he wrote,) ''when I
left America, nine hundred and seventy-four men con-
stituted all the force that could be collected in Penn-
sylvania, after the most indefatigable exertions, during
eight months;" whereas more than ten times that
number of New England farmers and frontiersmen, in
half as many weeks, had shouldered their weapons and
marched forth to oppose Burgoyne. The small people
among the Pennsylvanian Loyalists had no mind for
fighting ; and their great men shrank from responsi-
bility, and neither cared, nor dared, to govern. They
had not a Franklin, or a John Adams, or a Robert
Morris, or still less a Washington, among them ; and
such willingness as any of them displayed to serve the
King, met with very scanty encouragement from the
King's representatives. The military authorities showed
themselves blind to the duty, and inferior to the task,
of organising an efficient and self-respecting civil govern-
ment in those portions of the Continent which had been
conquered by the royal arms. One most fatal impedi-
ment to the recovery of America by the Crown was
the startling contrast between the methods of adminis-
tration within, and without, the British lines. On the
one side of that boundary were to be seen rulers like
Jonathan Trumbull, and WiUiam Livingston, and George
Clinton, — chosen by the people ; trusted and obeyed by
the people ; supported and advised by freely elected
State Assemblies ; husbanding and dispensing the
finances of their respective provinces in the interest of
the national defence ; and acting in friendly concert,
and on a footing of complete equality, with the generals
of the national army. On the other side was military
domination, untempered and unchecked, and too often
insolent, ignorant, and lax even beyond the bounds of
honesty ; military police-courts substituted for the tri-
bunals of the land ; arbitrary and degrading punishments
inflicted upon peaceable, well-affected, Tory citizens
who had given some chance offence to this Town Major,
348 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
or that German colonel; forced requisitions in the
place of voted taxes ; commissaries and contractors
subjected to no trained and intelligent official control,
jobbing and stealing with assured impunity, and going
home in rapid succession to set up as country gentle-
men in England. The inevitable consequences of such
a system were plainly set forth in a memorial addressed
to Lord CarUsle by the Chief Justice of New York.
"The Americans," (so the Judge wrote,) ''whether
Loyalists, or reduced and helpless Rebels, will naturally
grow impatient if they find themselves under a govern-
ment perfectly military, and will soon look out for that
happiness which is only to be enjoyed under a com-
plete establishment of Civil Police. . . . New York,
my Lord, exhibits proof that the government of an
army will please only in the tumultuous joy of the first
moment of redemption."
Our acquaintance with these deplorable transactions
is mainly, and indeed almost exclusively, derived from
Tory sources. American Whigs took very little account
of scandals and abuses known to them only by report ;
but the Loyalist pamphleteers and historians had been
eyewitnesses and victims of that maladministration to
which, more than to any other single circumstance,
they attributed the ultimate ruin of their cause. ^ Phila-
delphia was a royal garrison-town only for as many
months as the years during which New York suffered
under the same dispensation ; but in Philadelphia, no
less than in New York, the blight of military occupa-
tion was destructive to the vitality, the independence,
and the energy of the city. Municipal self-government
was at once extinguished, and the resident citizens
were excluded from public employment unless they
were willing to accept the rank of underlings and
1 The internal history of New York City during the Revolutionary War
is narrated in minute, but not superfluous or uninstructive, detail by Judge
Jones in the eight chapters at the commencement of his second volume ;
and in his first volume, in a chapter entitled " The Base Transactions
of Commissaries, Quartermasters, and Barrackmasters, and Engineers in
America."
PHILADELPHIA BECOMES UNTENABLE 349
instruments. Among those citizens Joseph Galloway
stood first in the general estimation. He was a learned
lawyer, and an advocate in very large practice, who
had been sent by his fellow-townsmen as a delegate to
the first Continental Congress. As a member of the
old Pennsylvanian Assembly he had held his own with,
and afterwards against, Benjamin Franklin; and he
had presided over its deliberations, with rare distinc-
tion, in the character of Speaker. His loyalty to the
throne was beyond dispute. The turbulence and dis-
order which were engendered by the opposition to the
Stamp Act had alienated his sympathies from the popular
party ; and his dislike of the Revolution was intensified
by an aversion to Presbyterians, whom in his own mind
he associated " with rioters, and the baser elements of
society." ^ He was the man, of all others, who could
have filled in Pennsylvania a commanding position,
analogous to that which Governor Trumbull occupied
in Connecticut ; but there was no such place for Joseph
Galloway in his own colony, or even in his own city.
Sir William Howe, as a recognition of his merits,
appointed him to be a sort of superior police officer,
charged with the issue of regulations governing trade
and markets, the entrance of boats and vessels, and the
care of streets and lamps. He was expected, moreover,
to compile a political census of the inhabitants, mark-
ing out the disaffected from the loyal for the guidance
and information of the Provost Marshal. Those were
the most exalted functions which, under military rule,
were allotted to the most eminent civilian who was then
domiciled in the capital of Pennsylvania.
Many Loyalist householders of Philadelphia had
hailed the rehabilitation of the King's authority with
a pleasant sense of approaching peace and comfort, and
of departed danger. They believed themselves to have
seen the last of revolutionary tyranny, and of paper
dollars ; and they fondly imagined that commercial
^ Joieph Galloway, the Loyalist Politician ; by Ernest H. Baldwin,
Ph.D.
350 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
prosperity would forthwith revive, and that every
honest man would thenceforward live in undisturbed
enjoyment of his property, and secure possession of his
home. On the twenty-sixth September, 1777, Robert
Morton, an ardent partisan of the English connection,
made the following entry in his private diary. "■ About
eleven o'clock Lord Cornwallis marched into this city
with his division of the British and auxiliary troops, to
the great relief of the inhabitants who have too long
suffered the yoke of arbitrary power. . . . This day has
put a period to the existence of Continental money in
this city. Esto perpetua ! "
The Pennsylvanian Tories were faithful subjects of
King George ; but they had American hearts, and they
felt a qualm of humiliation and disquietude when the
long column of Hessians poured down their street, with
the swing and swagger of an invading army. The
forebodings of the most timid among the spectators
were abundantly and promptly justified ; for the Ger-
man colonels made it very apparent that they viewed
Philadelphia as a conquered city. Bred in an atmos-
phere of privilege and despotism, they were not at the
trouble, when dealing with Americans, to distinguish
between one social class, or political party, and another.
In their eyes the whole population was a homogeneous
mass of low-born, ill-conditioned, and exceedingly im-
pertinent, plebeians. They were all rebels together,
in act or inclination ; and the least admirable among
them were those hypocrites and time-servers who, —
after bombarding their Sovereign Liege with petitions,
and remonstrances, and votes of censure upon the
ministers of his choice, — now plumed themselves on
their so-called " loyalty " because they had not risen
against him in arms when he declined to alter his
policy at their dictation. One Hessian officer wrote
home to a State Councillor at Cassel that the American
Revolution was a Scotch, Irish, Presbyterian rebellion,
the authors and instigators of which were the famous
Quakers. Another described Philadelphia as a common
PHILADELPHIA BECOMES UNTENABLE 35 1
sink of religions and nations, a mess and jumble of
every sect and belief, which did not yield to Sodom and
Gomorrah in respect of all the vices. Tories and
Whigs, — Methodists, Congregationalists, and Episco-
palians, — the King of England owed them nothing;
and the King's gallant allies could not be better em-
ployed than in despoiHng them of everything that they
called their own.
That was the creed of the foreign auxiliaries, and
they were not slow to convert theory into practice.
Robert Morton soon had to tell how he met a large
gang of Germans on their way to empty his barn, and
strip his garden. He applied for a guard to protect
him, and on that occasion he saved his property ; but
next day another party arrived with horses, carts, and
sacks, and carried away his hay, his cabbages, and his
potatoes. He was no worse off than his neighbours,
every one of whom was robbed of the vegetables and
the fruit on which he depended for maintaining his
family through the winter. It was a catching example ;
and many British privates vied with the Hessians in
the pursuit of plunder and mischief. When the cold
weather set in, the soldiers, sometimes without orders,
and seldom under very strict supervision, began to pull
down wooden houses for fuel. A poor clergyman,
himself a German, complained that the fence of a new
graveyard, which had cost his congregation nearly
eighty pounds, had been taken down and burned.^
Then ensued the rifling of larders and cellars, the
ransacking of wardrobes, and the demolition of libraries
and furniture, the choicest in all America, which had
been the pride and delight of wealthy and cultured
Loyalist gentlemen. That was something, (so Mr.
Morton declared,) which General Washington's army
could not be accused of. There is not, (he wrote,) one
instance to be produced where the rebels had wantonly
1 Extracts from the Journals of the Reverend Doctor Henry Muhlen-
berg, Minister and Praeses of the German Lutheran Ministry in the State
of Pennsylvania.
352 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
destroyed or burned their friends' property. The state
to which a large number of neat, and even elegant,
houses were reduced by their military inmates, and
especially by the cavalry, was shocking to a cleanly,
precise, and home-loving people.^ After the evacua-
tion of Philadelphia County by the royal army, an
assessment of the damage sustained by the inhabitants
was made in all the wards and townships. The Loyal-
ists, who had been the wealthiest, and who therefore
suffered the most, were no longer present to put in
their claims ; but, even so, the amount of loss inflicted
upon private individuals was estimated at a hundred
and eighty thousand pounds of English money.
The Philadelphians, among their other troubles, had
no means of escape from that compulsory inactivity
which is the purgatory of an energetic race. Foreign
commerce, their main source of livelihood, was dead.
The influx of sutlers, who had come up the river with
the fleet, had ruined the shops. Professional avoca-
tions were at a stand-still ; and the services of towns-
men were not asked, or accepted, for the government
and administration of their own municipality. Two or
three of the less reputable Tories, in an evil hour for
themselves, consented to act as informers against their
Whig neighbours, or as guides to parties of marauders
in their excursions round the farms and villages outside
the city. An Episcopal clergyman, — who had a flow-
ing pen, and defective insight into character, — occupied
himself over the composition of a long-winded epistle
in which he exhorted Washington to get the Declara-
tion of Independence rescinded by Congress, and after-
^ "The Congress meets in the College Hall, as the State House was
left by the enemy in a most filthy and sordid situation, as were many of
the public and private buildings in the City. Some of the genteel houses
were used for stables, and holes cut in the parlour-floors," for the pur-
pose of shovelling the dirt into the cellars. "The country northward
for several miles is one common waste, — the houses burned; the fruit-
trees cut down ; fences carried away ; gardens and orchards destroyed ;
Mr. Dickinson's and Morris's fine seats all demolished." Letter from
Josiah Bartlett, delegate to Congress from New Hampshire : Philadelphia,
July 13, 1778.
PHILADELPHIA BECOMES UNTENABLE 353
wards to negotiate with the Crown at the head of his
army.^ But the Loyalists, for the most part, left poli-
tics alone, and endured their dreary and aimless exist-
ence in a spirit of dignified resignation.
There was no satisfaction to be drawn from the
scenes around them. The Quakers, and not the
Quakers only, were saddened and shocked by all those
unhappy consequences which are inseparable from the
presence among a civil community of a numerous and
idle army. Regular employment grew slack. There
was much gambling and drunkenness, and the streets
were filled with loungers. ** Sober thrift and quiet
rectitude " had ceased to be the special qualities of a
Pennsylvanian artisan ; and young people of both sexes,
and all ranks, had bitter, and sometimes lifelong, cause
to regret that long carnival of frivolity and temptation. ^
The officers and soldiers, as was only too natural, did
not make it their business to inquire whether their
mode of life in Philadelphia conduced to the morality
of the town. *' We are well supplied," (so a Hessian
captain wrote,) "with all that is necessary and super-
fluous. Assemblies, Concerts, Comedies, Clubs, and
the like, make us forget that there is any war, save
that it is a capital joke." But the war was no laugh-
ing matter for the helpless Loyalists. One of them,
who had been rich when hostiUties commenced, was so
impoverished that in July 1778 his whole income did
not suffice to pay his taxes. Others, whose dwellings
had been wrecked and pillaged, complained that, when
the royal authorities took measures to check plunder
1 Washington had no feeling hotter than contempt for the suggestion
that he should play the part of General Monk ; but Washington's
countrymen did not so easily forgive the insult. The writer of the letter,
after a protracted exile in England, returned to spend his last months in
Philadelphia, where he now rests in peace beneath a laudatory epitaph :
"(Jn January the Third, 1798, the Reverend Jacob Duche passed from
his temporal to his angelic life."
•^ The Meeting fur Sufferings of First Month, Eighth, 1778, issued an
impressive warning against "the spirit of dissipation, levity, and pro-
faneness which sorrowfully has spread, and is spreading, principally
promoted by the military among us in and near the City."
VOL. IV. 2A
354 ^-^-^ AMERICAN REVOLUTION
and outrage, "it was in favour of their open, pro-
fessed, and determined enemies." The strength of their
political faith was not proof against their sense of
private wrong, and they began to wonder how they
could ever have been so simple and unsuspicious as to
welcome the advent of King George's soldiers. Their
partisanship was abated, and even in some cases ex-
tinct ; but none the less they were all marked men, —
scouted and execrated by the mass of their compatriots
as having fraternised with the invader, and been
recreant to the American cause. Seldom, in all the
tragic history of revolutions, did a company of worthier
and more blameless people find themselves in a more
pitiable and hopeless strait.^
^ Diary of Robert Morton. Diary of James Allen. The Journal of
Captain Montr esor. Extracts from the Letter- Book of Captain Johann
Heinrichs, of the Hessian J'dger Corps. Philadelphia, the Place and
the People: Chapters 13 and 14. A History of Quaker Government in
Pennsylvania^ by Isaac Sharpless, President of Haverford College :
Volume II.
CHAPTER XXXVI
THE CARLISLE COMMISSION. MONMOUTH COURT HOUSE
On the second of December, 1777, the fateful tidings
from Saratoga arrived in London ; and, very soon after
the commencement of the new year. Cabinet Ministers
were driven to acknowledge that an open breach with
France was a matter of a few v^eeks, and possibly of a
few hours. It was the season for strong measures,
and strange proposals. Lord Barrington, on his
responsibility as Secretary of War, informed George
the Third that he had not a single general in whom
the nation placed any confidence, and urged that a
command should be offered to Prince Ferdinand of
Brunswick. It was extremely unlikely that the victor
of Minden would consent to take orders from a certain
Secretary of State whom he had formerly known in
Germany as Lord George Sackville ; and His Majesty,
who had a healthy sense of humour, made sport of the
artless suggestion. He turned again in his need to Lord
Amherst, who a second time declined to draw his sword
against the revolted colonists ; but the old warrior gave
his Sovereign the benefit of his advice, and warned him
that it would be impossible to " carry on with any
effect an offensive land war" across the Atlantic, unless
Sir William Howe, or the general who succeeded him,
was reinforced by forty thousand men. Ten thousand
regular infantry, as the King well knew, were the very
utmost that could be placed in line on English soil to
repel a French invasion. All hope of subduing the
rebellion by force was for the time abandoned ; and
Lord North was empowered to try his hand at recover-
ing America by political and diplomatic measures.^
1 The Political Life of William Wildman, Viscount Barrington, com-
piled from Original Papers by his brother, Skute, Bishop of Durham ;
London, 1814. George the Third to Lord North ; January 9 and 13, and
February 5, 1778.
355 2A 2
356 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
On the seventeenth of February, 1778, the Prime
Minister imparted to a bewildered and dejected House
of Commons his scheme for the reconciliation of the
alienated colonies. He proposed to repeal the tea
duty, and to pass an Act removing all doubts and
apprehensions concerning taxation, by the parliament
of Great Britain, in any of the provinces or plantations
of North America. He announced himself as prepared
to expunge from the statute-book the law which closed
the port of Boston ; the law which destroyed the
charter of Massachusetts ; and the laws which excluded
New England mariners from the Newfoundland fisheries,
and which prohibited trade and intercourse between
Great Britain and America. A full pardon was offered
to all who had been engaged in rebellion ; and the
Home Government definitely, and finally, renounced the
power of bringing political prisoners across the sea to
be tried for treason in England. No bill, enacting an
alteration in the Constitution of any colony, was hence-
forward to be laid before Parliament, save and except at
the request of the colony itself. The practice in
American Courts of Justice, and the tenure of office by
the Judges, were to be regulated in accordance with
colonial opinion ; and the royal Governors, and civil
and judicial magistrates, were to be elected by the
local population, upon an understanding that all such
appointments were subject to the approval of the King.
The credit of the British Treasury might be employed
to facilitate the withdrawal of the large quantity of
paper currency issued by Congress for the purpose of
defraying the expenses of the war against the British
Crown. Any expression of a desire, on the part of the
colonists, to have a reasonable number of representatives
in the parliament at Westminster would be deliberately,
and very amicably, considered. A Royal Commission
was to visit America in order to arrange the details of
pacification on the spot ; and those Commissioners would
be specifically charged to address the Commander-in-
Chief of the American forces, and all other members of
THE CARLISLE COMMISSION 357
the American Government, ** by any style or title "
which the personages in question thought fit to assume.
Small or great, ceremonial or essential, every point in
dispute between the British Cabinet, and the Con-
tinental Congress, was surrendered without ambiguity
and without reserve.
" A dull and melancholy silence for some time
succeeded to this speech. It had been heard with
profound attention, but without a single mark of appro-
bation to any part, from any description of men, or any
particular man, in the House." ^ The blow was crushing
to the self-respect of those very numerous gentlemen
who had been returned for ministerial boroughs under
a pledge that they agreed, in every detail, with the
American policy of the Government.^ Honourable
members sat wondering what had become of the vital
British interests, and the immutable constitutional
principles, for which the nation had so long been
fighting. Almost without drawing breath, the Prime
Minister had abandoned the whole of a policy the
obstinate pursuit of which had involved the Empire in
six years of riot and civil strife, three sanguinary and
ruinous campaigns, a duel to the death against France,
and the near prospect of a succession of wars with
an unknown number of other European States. It is
a marvellous thought that the authors of that policy
should have continued to pose as statesmen. But it is
more remarkable still that there are writers in our own
generation who exalt George the Third, and Lord North,
1 "History of Europe" in the Annual Register for 1778 ; Chapter 7.
Lord North's speech, as given in an abbreviated and confused parlia-
mentary report, indicates the general character of his proposals. The
complete plan is expounded, with minute and curious precision, in The
Instructions by George the Third to his Commissioners to treat with the
American Colonies.
'^ The Earl of Sandwich set down, in black and white, the terms which
he demanded for one of the seats at Huntingdon. " I must have 2000/.
to be lent me for five years on my bond ; and to pay the expenses of the
election, which in all probability would not amount to 300/. The con-
ditions offered to Captain Phipps are the thinking, and acting, as I do on
all American points." The Manuscripts of the Marquess of Abergavenny.
358 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
as wise and patriotic rulers ; and who condemn Fox,
and Burke, and Lord Chatham, and all the other op-
ponents of an insane and fatal course of public action, as
poor-spirited and disloyal citizens, the friends of every
country except their own.
The principal Commissioner was Frederick, Earl
of Carlisle, a contemporary and schoolfellow of Charles
Fox, and the sworn companion of his early scrapes and
follies. Lord Carlisle had already begun to mend his
ways ; and he continued on the path of improvement
until, before the close of a long life, he was respect-
ability, — and, in the eyes of his youthful kinsman Lord
Byron, even pomposity, — personified. In one important
regard he was well qualified for the high function with
which he had now been intrusted ; inasmuch as he was
a man of lofty and unblemished honour.^ Nevertheless
London society, which had so recently been discussing
the amount of his losses at cards, and the number and
splendour of his dress-suits, was not as yet prepared to
take him for a serious statesman. It is true that he
had of late become a place-holder and a Privy Coun-
cillor ; but the lives led by much older, and more exalted,
members of Lord North's government were not such as
to impress the world with a belief that accession to
ministerial office must necessarily be accounted a sign
of reformation, and a mark of grace. Carlisle seemed
too slight and juvenile for a plenipotentiary ; and the
general opinion concerning him was summed up in the
verdict that he was a very fit Commissioner for making
a treaty which would never be made.^ Our own
generation, however, has no reason to regret that he
was sent to America. Lord Carlisle was the frequent
and intimate correspondent of George Selwyn, and
much the better worth reading of the two. He strained
^ " Lord Northington brought me home two nights in his coach, and
in one "of them the conversation turned upon you. He said there was
nobody had a better idea of what a gentleman should be than Carlisle ;
that you was so throughout." George Selwyn to Lord Carlisle ; Dec. 9,
1775-
2 Walpole to Mason ; March 4, 1778.
THE CARLISLE COMMISSION 359
at wit less visibly than his older friend ; he wrote a
clear downright style, free from the mixed jargon of
French, Italian, Mayfair English, and hackneyed Latin
phrases, which ordinarily disfigured Selwyn's letters ;
and he had a far more observant and kindly interest in
the large class of human beings who did not belong
to White's or Brooks's. The private papers of Lord
Carlisle, preserved among the archives at Castle Howard,
afford a life-like and very amusing picture of Trans-
atlantic scenes and manners from the point of view of
a travelled and well-educated Englishman. So much,
at any rate, the young nobleman did for the advantage
of posterity ; while it is absolutely certain that, as far
as the public object of his mission to America was con-
cerned, the most experienced diplomatist in Christendom
could have achieved nothing but failure.
All hope of a successful issue had vanished before
ever Lord Carlisle, and his brother Commissioners, set
foot upon Pennsylvanian soil. Acts of Parliament, (said
Horace Walpole,) had made a rebellion ; but Acts of
Parliament could not repeal one. The concessions
offered by the mother-country had one fatal defect, that
they came too late. The Treaty between the United
States, and France, had now been signed ; and, instead
of a peace with her own colonies, England henceforward
" must expect war with the High Allies." ^ That was
how Walpole put the case ; and the cleverest of all
Lord North's parliamentary supporters, Edward Gibbon,
was forced to admit that " the two great countries in
Europe were fairly running a race for the favour of
America ; " and that England was not the winner.^
When the news of the Paris Treaty arrived in
Pennsylvania, the leaders of Congress thought it right
to give Louis the Sixteenth an emphatic and public
assurance that they would see him through the quarrel
on which, for their sake, he had now embarked. They
1 Walpole to Sir Horace Mann ; Feb. 18, 1778.
2 Gibbon to ILjlroyd ; Feb. 23, 1778.
360 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
called upon all officers in their employment to subscribe
a form of oath by which they abjured allegiance to the
King of Great Britain, and promised to maintain and
defend the United States against George the Third, and
his heirs and successors, according to the best of their
skill and understanding, in the offices which they
respectively held at the time of swearing. That last
phrase was awkwardly constructed ; and the officers of
one Virginian brigade, though they were Whigs and
rebels to a man, hesitated to sign because the words
might be taken as implying an obligation not to
retire from the army until the war was ended. When
the generals at Valley Forge came together for the
purpose of affixing their names to the paper, Charles
Lee excited the boisterous hilarity of his comrades by
explaining that, while he was prepared to refuse obedi-
ence to George the Third, he entertained a conscientious
objection against renouncing the Prince of Wales. But
these, and all other, scruples were speedily laid at rest ;
and every civil and military servant of the United
States was henceforward bound by a solemn pledge of
loyalty to the Republic, and hostility to the Crown.
It was an unhappy circumstance that the brothers
Howe, who themselves were members of the Royal
Commission for treating with the colonies, — and
who were respected, and not disliked, by the great
majority of Americans, — should be absent from New
York when intelligence of what had taken place in
the British parliament reached that city. The duty of
opening communications with the Revolutionary author-
ities devolved upon Governor Tryon, who was bitterly
hated, and universally distrusted and disbelieved.
Tryon hastened to print off a large edition of Lord
North's conciliatory bills, and took measures for having
them read throughout the Confederacy. He enclosed
copies to General Washington, with a polite request that
he would aid in the work of distribution, " so that the
people at large might be acquainted with the favourable
disposition of Great Britain towards the American colo-
THE CARLISLE COMMISSION 36 1
nies." Washington, after convincing himself, with some
difficulty, that the Bills were genuine,^ sent them to
the President of Congress ; and Congress unanimously
resolved not to confer or treat with any Commissioners
from Great Britain until the British fleet and army were
withdrawn from the United States, and their indepen-
dence recognised in positive and express terms by the
British Ministers. Tryon received many replies to his
circular, the most noteworthy of which came from
Governor Trumbull. " If peace," the old man said,
" be really the object, let your proposals be addressed
properly to the proper power, and your negotiations
honorably conducted. We shall then have some
prospect of, (what is the most ardent wish of every
honest American,) a lasting and honorable peace. The
British nation may then, perhaps, find us as affectionate
and valuable friends as we now are determined and
fatal enemies, and derive from that friendship more
solid and real advantage than the most sanguine can
expect from conquest."^ Jonathan Trumbull, when
he wrote that sentence, had a true and prophetic
glimpse into an exceedingly distant future.
Lord Carlisle and his colleagues had looked forward
1 Washington had ground for suspicion, because the semi-ofificial Tory
press of New York made a practice of foisting upon its readers a large
quantity of fictitious political literature. In February, 1778, Rivington's
Royal Gazette printed, as a valuable discovery, some letters from the
Commander-in-Chief of the American army to his wife and kinsfolk,
which were stated to have been found in the possession of a mulatto
servant who had been captured at Fort Lee. The letters were manu-
factured with a certain infernal skill, and contained passages artfully
designed to show that Washington's public conduct was dictated solely by
personal ambition, while at heart he disliked the Revolution and dis-
approved of the war.
In the following March two sham Resolutions of Congress were pub-
lished in the New York Gazette, " with all the formalities of place and
date, and the signatures of the President and Secretary, the object of
which was to foment discontent in the American army, and prevent
enlistments." Washington, more incensed than when his own reputation
had been the subject of calumnious attack, denounced this proceeding as
a forgery infamous to the last degree.
2 Collections of the Massachtisetts Historical Society ; Seventh Series,
Vol. II.
362 THE AMERICAN- REVOLUTION
to opening negotiations with Congress under very
different circumstances from those which actually
awaited them in Philadelphia. They had pictured
themselves as offering terms of peace to a defeated
adversary from the walls of his conquered capital.
They had felt confident that Sir William Howe, and his
victorious army, would keep General Washington at
a very respectful distance from the royal outposts by
the mere terror of their name ; and they expected, with
good reason, to find the Delaware as much an English
water as the Humber or the Mersey. Even that hope
was sadly disappointed. Lord Carlisle told his wife
that he had enjoyed his voyage on the magnificent
river ; admiring ** a beautiful country, covered with
wood, and to all appearance extremely rich ; " and
passing in review, with close attention and constant
amusement, more than three hundred sail of different
shipping which he encountered on his journey up-
stream. But none the less he could not avoid noticing
the chain of royal war vessels stationed a few miles
from each other, all along the channel, in order to
protect the navigation from hostile raiders ; *' for I am
grieved," he said, '' to tell you that both sides of the
river are in possession of the enemy, who are well
armed, and absolutely prevent any intercourse whatever
with the land." ^ The British Commissioners arrived
at Philadelphia on Saturday the sixth of June ; and
on the following Tuesday Lord Carlisle learned some-
thing about the state of affairs on shore. '* I have
this morning," he wrote, " been taking a ride into
the country about ten miles ; — grieved I am to say,
eight miles beyond our possessions. Our lines extend
only two ; and the Provincial army is posted very
strongly about six-and-twenty miles distant. This is
market-day ; and to protect the people bringing in
provisions, which otherwise they would not dare to
do, large detachments, to the amount of above two
1 Lord Carlisle to Lady Carlisle: April 24 to June 17; — "a long
letter in the form of a diary." Castle Howard Manuscripts.
THE CARIISLE COMMISSION 363
thousand men, are sent forward into the country. We
profited by this safe-guard ; and I attended the general,
Sir Henry Clinton, as far as German Town, — a place as
remarkable, and as much an object of curiosity for
those who have any respect for the present times, as
Edge Hill or Naseby Field is to those whose veneration
is excited only by their great-grandfathers."^ The
historical parallel was in one respect incomplete ; for
Fairfax or Cromwell, six months after the battle, would
most certainly have been free to revisit Naseby with-
out an escort of two thousand pikemen and musketeers.
There was a keen sense of dissatisfaction and
humiliation among the officers of Clinton's army. They
had been watching eagerly for the advent of summer, and
for the arrival from England of a very strong reinforce-
ment, on the exact figure of which they were all of them
agreed. But the month of May, instead of bringing
with it twenty thousand more British and German
infantry, with the thrice welcome signal for an advance
in force against Washington's intrenchments, brought
nothing more inspiriting than the report of Lord North's
very doleful oration in the House of Commons, and
some odd copies of his conciliation bills. Lord Carlisle,
however, who had never before in his life seen so many
good soldiers together, was firmly persuaded that the
troops already concentrated in Philadelphia, without the
addition of another bayonet, were numerous enough,
and brave enough, to bring America to reason. Accord-
ing to his own statement he had looked forward to the
satisfaction of warning Congress that, if they trifled
with the British proposals for an accommodation, " so
fine an army, so disciplined, so healthy, so everything,
might possibly be of some inconvenience to them ; " but
he now learned that for some wise purposes, with which
he was not acquainted, "this fine army was to be of no
inconvenience to them whatever.'"^ Sir Henry Clinton,
1 The Earl of Carlisle to George Selwyn ; Philadelphia, Wednesday,
June 10, 1778.
2 Lord Carlisle to Lady Carlisle; June 14, Philadelphia.
364 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
to his surprise and stupefaction, informed him that the
Government at home had given positive orders to
abandon Philadelphia, and retreat upon New York ; —
orders which the Secretary of State had industriously
and designedly kept secret from Lord Carhsle, although
they had been issued many weeks before his departure
from England.^ That was in Lord George Germaine's
habitual manner ; and the Prime Minister himself was
greatly to blame for having sanctioned so wide a
deviation from the rules of fair play, and honourable
conduct, between man and man.^
Lord CarHsle's pride was cruelly wounded. He sa^f
himself in the character of an envoy who had been
befooled by his employers ; and the military superiority,
which is the vantage-ground of the diplomatist, had
been deliberately, and in his view quite unnecessarily,
thrown away at the precise moment when negotia-
tions were about to commence.^ He assured his wife,
in language becoming a great English nobleman who
likewise was a public servant, that he should keep his
temper to the last, and exert himself to restrain the
violence of some with whom he was obliged to act*
For the Commissioners were very angry ; and Governor
Johnstone, in particular, who had always been a fight-
ing man, — and who, some years previously, did his
utmost to shoot Lord George Germaine in a duel in
1 The Earl of Carlisle to the Reverend Mr. Ekins : Private.
2 Lord Carlisle, when attending in Downing Street to receive his
instructions, had an opportunity of informing himself how public business
was done by the leading members of that very remarkable Caliinet.
" Little passed," he wrote, " of any real importance ; and I confess I came
away by no means edified by the conversation, and not a little shocked at
the slovenly manner with which an affair, so serious in its nature, had
been dismissed."
3 " That which we have always looked upon as the great instrument
which was to secure us success, the active and offensive course of Military
operations^ was no longer there to support our proceedings. A defensive
war carries with it neither threats nor terrors. . . . You will agree with
me that our offers of peace wore too much the appearance of supplica-
tions for mercy from a vanquished, and exhausted, State." Lord Carlisle
to the Reverend Air. Ekins: Private.
* Lord Carlisle to Lady Carlisle ; June 21, 1778.
MONMOUTH COURT HOUSE 365
Hyde Park, — was exceedingly outspoken whe^i remark-
ing on the treatment to which he and his brethren had
been subjected. He agreed, (so he declared,) with an
observation of the Marquis of Montrose that ''there is
nothing more contemptible than a retreating army, or
a supplicating Prince."^ King George's Commissioners
soon tasted the full bitterness of the great Cavalier's
maxim. They requested General Washington to grant
them a passport for their Secretary, who was no less
a personage than Doctor Adam Ferguson, Professor of
Pneumatics and Moral Philosophy in Edinburgh Uni-
versity. Washington's reply was a rather frigid sample
of that courtesy which Americans never entirely with-
hold from an eminent man of letters.^ While expressing
his recognition of Doctor Ferguson's talents and popu-
larity, he declined to admit him through the lines without
a special order from the President of Congress ; and the
Commissioners, accordingly, had no choice but to send
in their packet of papers under an ordinary flag of
truce. The proposals made by the British Government
met with an unfavourable reception, and a tardy re-
sponse ; for the answer of Congress, which in its effect
was tantamount to a refusal, did not reach Lord Carlisle's
hands until he had placed many leagues of river, and
open sea, between himself and the city of Philadelphia.
For three years to come, until hostilities had died
out, and the peace was fast approaching, Sir Henry Clin-
ton was left in command of the royal forces in America.
During the whole of that period the King insisted that
some kind of war should be kept going; but he and
his Ministers did not encourage, or even permit, any
^ Governor George Johnstone to Lord Carlisle.
2 " If an occasion shall present itself of an interview with Doctor
Ferguson, you may rely, Sir, I shall esteem myself happy in showing him
the civilities flue to his literary and social character." George Washing-
ton to William Eden, Commissioner from the Court of Great Britain to
America; Headquarters, 12 June, 1778. Washington, on the same day,
wrote in much the same terms to Governor Johnstone.
366 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
serious attempt to recover by arms either New England,
the birthplace and focus of the rebellion, or those rich
and populous Central provinces where Congress was
domiciled, and where Washington's army lay. Clinton
was never in sufficient strength, and never his own
master. He was supplied at uncertain intervals with
scanty numbers of half-trained recruits, and distracted
by Lord George Germaine's foolish and contradictory
orders. He laboured under a still more embarrassing
disadvantage, which at last resulted in a fatal catas-
trophe to the British arms ; for he found himself un-
able to depend with any confidence, — in that region of
islands, and estuaries, and navigable rivers, — upon tho
assistance of a navy mismanaged and misdirected by the
Earl of Sandwich. A commander hampered by such
difficulties was foredoomed to contemporary unpopu-
larity, and to historical insignificance. Sir Henry Clin-
ton's name is not now remembered by the great body of
his fellow-countrymen ; and in his own lifetime he was
accounted the most notorious of those
" Generals who will not conquer when they may,
Firm friends to peace, to pleasure, and good pay." ^
Clinton was never the man to attempt impossibilities,
or to accomplish miracles ; but several times in the
course of his career he was charged with the conduct
of a specific military operation, and proved himself an
unusually capable officer. His qualifications as a leader
were seldom more severely tested than when the
Cabinet in London imposed upon him the tough, and
^ Cowper's Table Talk \ London, 1782. A letter preserved among
the manuscripts of the Earl of Verulam at Gorhambury gives a notion of
the talk which went on in army circles, almost within Sir Henry Clinton's
hearing. " Since our arrival nothing has happened sufficiently important
to deserve your attention ; and, {entre nous,) we expect nothing under our
present commander. Nothing, surely, can be more shameful than our
perfect inactivity during the whole summer and autumn. . . . For God's
sake let us have a man of resolution or abilities!" J. Marvin Nooth to
Viscountess Grimston ; New York, November 23, 1779.
MONMOUTH COURT HOUSE 367
ungrateful, task of extricating King George's troops
from Philadelphia, and replacing them on Manhattan
Island.
It would have seemed an easy and simple matter
to put them all on ship-board, with their stores and
cannon, and carry them back to New York by water.
But, in Sir Henry Clinton's judgment, the idea of com-
mitting the only English army in America to the
hazards, and the possible delays, of an ocean voyage
was forbidden by strategical considerations of the
utmost gravity. If the winds were unfavourable, the
great convoy of British transports might very well
spend a month on their way between port and port,
and would then arrive by driblets ; while Washington,
with sixteen or eighteen thousand men, could reach
New York in a fortnight ; and the Comte d'Estaing and
his battle-ships, if he had used reasonable expedition,
might be there already. The only method by which
Clinton could make sure of averting that crushing
disaster, which the loss of New York would inflict
upon the royal cause, was to keep his own army con-
stantly interposed between General Washington and
the threatened city ; and he accordingly determined to
effect his retreat by land. Moreover, the accommoda-
tion on the fleet was not unlimited ; and there was a
great deal to be taken home which had never been
brought out. The army now possessed five thousand
horses, almost all of which had been collected, by re-
quisition or purchase, during Sir William Howe's occu-
pation of Pennsylvania. Something had been said
about killing the greater part of them, as the French
long afterwards killed their beasts of burden when
Massena retired from Portugal in the spring of 181 1;
but that was not an English expedient. There was
another claim, which could not be ignored, upon the
humanity of our countrymen. Room had to be found
in the transports for a whole population of Loyalists ;
"unfortunate beings," (said Lord Carlisle,) "who at
least deserved from us this mark of our attention and
368 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
compassion in preventing them from falling into the
hands of a relentless enemy."
As early as the middle of May, orders had been
issued that the heavy baggage of the army should be in
readiness for embarkation at the shortest notice ; and
the large guns and mortars had been withdrawn from
the redoubts, and carefully packed on board the
Ordnance transports.^ These necessary precautions
could not be kept secret ; and Philadelphia was soon
in a ferment of emotion. It had become known
that, after the departure of the British army, an
Oath of Allegiance to the United States would be
exacted from all private citizens under pains and
penalties of extreme rigour. Sir William Howe had
somewhat lightly advised a deputation of Loyalists to
make their peace with the adversary, and throw them-
selves on the tender mercies of Congress ; but these
poor people only too well knew what that resource was
worth. They were in an agony of distress and alarm ;
and Sir Henry CUnton, as the person responsible for
the honour of England, assured them that no one who
desired to sail should be left behind. The Quakers
alone gave no sign of perturbation, and calmly pursued
their ordinary avocations amidst the general panic and
flurry. It seemed, (said an American writer,) as if, in
their aversion to all military operations, they regarded
even running away, that very material part of battle,
as opposed to the principles of their Society.^ It was
not that they contemplated submission to Congress ;
for, — even if, under any circumstances whatever, they
had been free to swear, — a pledge of subordination to
a Revolutionary authority was the very last oath which
they would think it right to take. They remained
in Philadelphia, silent and passive under sharp perse-
cution, and steadfastly refusing, by any word or action
of their own, to abet war, or to countenance rebellion.
Their courage and consistency vanquished the intoler-
1 Journal of Captain Montresor ; May 14, 1778.
2 Philadelphia^ the Place and the People % Chapter 12.
MONMOUTH COURT HOUSE 369
ance of their political opponents ; and, when hostilities
at length ceased, and the Independence of America was
acknowledged by the Court of Great Britain, they settled
themselves down in wilHng obedience to the Government
of the United States, which from that time forward they
regarded as a lawful and existent power, ordained of God.
That was the course taken by the Quakers ; but all
other Pennsylvanian Tories who were too honest to belie
their convictions, or who had committed themselves
against the Revolution too deeply to be forgiven, directed
their energies to the dreary work of preparing for exile.
Over the space of a fortnight, from the twenty-eighth of
May onwards, they were dismantling their beautiful
houses, and carting their goods to the water-side, and
installing their families between decks to the number of
three thousand souls. As fast as the transports were
loaded, they dropped down stream to their appointed
anchorage, until the river was alive with vessels of every
size and description, from the wharves along the city-
front, to the mouth of the Brandywine. " You have the
best heart in the world," (so Lord Carlisle wrote to a
lady of rank in England ;) '* and it would tear it to pieces
to be witness to what I now see from my cabin window,
— all our ships, to the amount of about three hundred,
transporting the miserable inhabitants of Philadelphia
to some place of temporary protection from those they
have offended by favouring our cause in this dispute."
Such was indeed the case. The friends of the Crown
were harshly, and often very cruelly, treated by the par-
tisans of the Revolution. And yet it is impossible to
deny that, if they had not been forced to take sides in a
quarrel spontaneously and gratuitously sprung upon
the colonies by the British ministry, the Philadelphian
Tories, and their Whig neighbours, would at that very
moment have all been living peaceably, and comfort-
ably, as Loyahsts together.^
1 Lord Carlisle to the Dutchess of , June 18, 1778 ; on board the
Trident. Philadelphia; the Place and the People; Chapters 13 and 14.
President Sharpless's History ; Chapter 8, on " (Quaker Suffering."
VOL. IV. SB
3/0 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
The time was short; the demand for labour urgent
and universal ; and the means of carriage, both by road
and sea, inadequate to so exceptional an emergency.
Vast quantities of stores, which were exactly adapted
to satisfy the most crying needs of the American troops
and the American people, still remained undestroyed.
" For salt," (^rote one of Lord Dartmouth's informers,)
" they are in the utmost distress ; and they will feel
their want of it in the hot weather, when fresh meat
will not keep three or four hours." A hundred and
thirty thousand bushels of that precious commodity were
abandoned as spoil for the victors at the evacuation of
Philadelphia. Some Whig townsmen, — who had a re
serve store of hard money, and an eye for a falling market,
— employed those golden hours in buying up the stocks
of Tory merchants mtent on flight, for re-sale to General
Washington's Commissariat officers ; and goods to the
value of a hundred and forty thousand pounds, of prime
importance to the soldier, were by this operation secured
for the use of the Continental Army.
On the eighteenth of June Lord Howe weighed anchor,
and proceeded down the river with his war-ships, and
chartered merchantmen, in his train. He was accom-
panied by Lord Carlisle, who was glad to be quit of his
city lodging,^ and quite content to await the inevitable
failure of his diplomatic efforts at New York instead of
at Philadelphia. The fleet had on board Clinton's sick
and wounded, as well as those Bayreuth and Anspach
conscripts who had so recently excited the pity of Eu-
rope by the miserable story of their mutiny in Franconia.
A great number had already deserted ; and none of them
could be trusted to resist the facilities for evasion which
were sure to occur during a prolonged retreat in front of
1 ** I have one of the best houses for my quarters. The gentleman to
whom it belongs has still an apartment in it. He is perfectly civil;
though I feel distressed at coming into his house without asking his leave,
and placing a couple of sentries at hie door." Lord Carlisle to Lady
Carlisle ; Philadelphia, June 8.
MONMOUTH COURT HOUSE 37 1
a pursuing enemy .^ Before dawn on that same eighteenth
of June, the royal troops in Philadelphia left their quar-
ters, and passed through the streets, and across the
ferries, in so quiet and orderly a fashion that the
citizens, awaking at their usual hour, were astonished to
find the army gone. Towards ten in the morning a party
of Major Lee's dragoons galloped down to the quay,
only just in time to see the EngHsh rear-guard off, as it
embarked for the Jersey shore. Sir Henry CHnton
took with him across the river forty-six field-pieces, and
about seventeen thousand men ; a most formidable
body of soldiers, if only their faces had been turned in
the right direction. ^ They were hardy, strong-limbed,
and active fellows, — responsive to the leadership, and
amenable to the control, of their high-spirited and vigi-
lant regimental officers. Their moral and physical
qualities were shrewdly tried during the first ten days
of that memorable retreat.
Towards the end of the previous century WilHam
Penn, after a few years' experience of the colony that he
had founded, ruefully confessed that, in those latitudes,
"the weather often changeth without notice, and is
constant almost in its inconstancy." During the month
of June, 1778, New Jersey maintained the character of
the region in which it was situated. When the British
reached their second halting-place, the rain poured
down for fourteen consecutive hours, ruining the high-
ways, soaking the baggage, spoiling the ammunition
and provisions, and drenching the soldiers to their skin.
Then came a long spell of the most terrible heat which
had afflicted the province within the range of human
memory. Many died of sun-stroke ; the features of the
^ The other Germans in Clinton's army preferred to believe that the
two wretched battalions were conveyed by water, because they were
totally incapable of executing a march on land.
2 On the third of July, 1 778, Sir Henry Clinton had under his command,
"fit for duty," 859 officers, 1,114 Serjeants, 572 trumpeters and drum-
mers, and 13,907 rank and file; amounting in all to 16,452 men. In the
course of the preceding fortnight, the army had been weakened by a
severe action, a very trying series of marches, and many desertions.
2B 2
372 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
men were swollen past recognition by mosquito-bites ;
and at the end of a day's march, short in distance
though long in time, one Hessian out of every three
had been left panting and prostrate on the roadside.^
The infantry, burdened like pack-horses, and clothed
and accoutred as for a Birthday parade in a European
capita^, were kept stationary hour after hour under the
blazing sun ; for the train of carts was a dozen miles in
length, and frequently travelled on a single causeway. ^
The Americans broke down all the bridges over which
the column had to pass ; and Sir Henry Clinton was
powerless to hinder the work of destruction. He was
very short of cavalry, and the whole country-side wa:
out and about with hostile intentions against him and
his army. According to the account given to Lord
Carlisle by his military friends, there was not a single
Jerseyman, capable of bearing arms, who remained at
home. They bestowed their families, and their live-
stock, in a place of safety ; they cut the ropes of the
wells ; and, leaving their crops for the spoiler, and
their houses for the torch, they betook themselves, gun
in hand, to the woods which bordered the English
line of march.^ The inexorable animosity of the local
population made a profound and durable impression
upon the mind of the British general. In September
1792, when the Duke of Brunswick was conducting his
disastrous campaign against the French Republic, he
was attended by Sir Henry Clinton, who in very old
days had served him as aide-de-camp. Like causes
produce like results ; and, after Clinton had ridden
through Champagne for a while with the invading army,
1 Lowell's Hessians ; Chapter 17.
2 Letter from Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Clinton to Lord George
Germaine ; New York, July 5, 1778.
3 Lord Carlisle to Lady Carlisle; July 21, 1778, New York. "The
common people," (wrote Lord Carlisle,) " hate us in their hearts. . . .
Formerly, when things went better for us, there was an appearance of
friendship by their coming in for pardons ; but, no sooner was our situa-
tion the least altered for the worst, but these friends were the first to fire
on us ; and many were taken with their pardons in their pockets."
MONMOUTH COURT HOUSE 373
he informed his old chief that the silence of the country,
the disappearance of the inhabitants, and their speedy
communication of intelligence among each other, made
him think that he was on the soil of America during
the late rebellion.^
The evacuation of Philadelphia was known at Valley
Forge by eleven of the clock on the same morning ; and
Washington forthwith emerged from his lines of Torres
Vedras, and started on the track of his departing ad-
versary. Before the afternoon was half over, six of
his brigades were on the road to Coryell's Ferry. The
Americans crossed the river on the twenty-second June ;
and two days afterwards the generals were summoned
to a Council of War. Their deliberations, (so Alexander
Hamilton contemptuously declared,) would have done
credit to the Most Honourable Society of Midwives, and
to them onl)^ Charles Lee made a flaming speech about
building a bridge of gold for a retreating enemy. He
exhorted his colleagues to reflect that the French alliance
was secured beyond fear of loss ; that a general action
would inevitably result in an American defeat ; and that
it would be ''criminal" folly to bring a valiant, and highly
disciplined, army of British regulars to bay. Most of his
audience deferred to the authority of an officer who
stood next in rank to the Commandernn-Chief, and
whose military reputation dated from the heroic, and
already somewhat mythical, period of the Seven Years'
War. The Marquis de Lafayette modestly, but man-
fully, advocated the opposite view, and carried with him
Anthony Wayne, always eager for a battle, and Nathanael
Greene, whose opinion was worth that of all the others
together. The majority of the council advised against an
aggressive movement; but they were overruled by Wash-
ington, who announced his intention of pushing forward
a detachment with orders to follow up the British at
close quarters, and use every endeavour to make them
turn and fight. Charles Lee solemnly declined to take
* Clinton's words are quoted, from the Annual Register y by Albert
Sorel, in his History of Europe and the French Revolution,
374 ^^^ AMERICAN REVOLUTION
any part in a plan of action which, according to his own
notion, was sure to fail ; and the post of danger and
glory was allotted to Lafayette. On the morrow, how-
ever, — irresolute even in the abnegation of responsi-
bility, — Lee applied for permission to withdraw his
refusal. He had learned in the meanwhile that the
advance-guard, henceforward officially known as *' the
flying army," was to be a full six thousand strong, and
composed of choice troops ; and a rumour had reached
his ears that Stirling, of whom he was desperately
jealous, showed a disposition to put in his claim for the
command. Washington referred the decision to Lafay-
ette ; and Lee, with the eloquence of despair, made an
artful, although not very dignified, appeal to the com-
passion of the young Frenchman. " I place in your
hands," he said, *' my honour and my fortune. You
are too generous to wreck both the one and the other."
Lafayette was not hard-hearted enough to reject the
entreaties of a famous man, more than twice his own
age; and, late at night on the twenty-seventh June, he
wrote a letter definitely handing over the command to
Lee. The chivalrous Marquis was now to learn, not
by any means for the last time in the course of his
career, that occasions occur in the management of
public affairs when it is quite possible to be too much
of a gentleman.^
Charles Lee had gained his object, to the ultimate
ruin of his personal and military reputation. With no
self-knowledge, and no firmness of character, and with-
out even so much as a clear conception whether he
wished America or England to win, he had pitted himself
against a singularly cool and resolute antagonist. On
the twenty-fourth of June Sir Henry Clinton arrived at
Allenstown, the point from which he intended to strike
northward through Brunswick to Perth Amboy, in
order to take ship for Staten Island and New York
1 Alexander Hamilton to Elias Boudinot ; Brunswick, July 5th, 1778.
Memoire de ma main, du General Lafayette.
MONMOUTH COURT HOUSE 375
city.^ He had consumed a full week over the first
forty miles of his journey. Although his progress was
inordinately slow, his route was admirably chosen ; for
his interminable caravan of waggons had hitherto been
protected on the west, which was his vulnerable
quarter, by the whole breadth of the Delaware. He
was met at Allenstown by the intelligence that Washing-
ton was already across the river, threatening the flank
of his elongated column of march with an army which
he knew to be hardly less efficient, and believed to be
very much larger, than his own. There were those
who urged him to disencumber his movements by
destroying the whole of his baggage on the spot ; but
his military pride forbade that humiliating sacrifice,
and he preferred to rely for safety on his own strategical
skill, and on the mettle of his soldiers. The promptitude
and vigour of his measures left nothing to be desired.
Without hesitation he threw his left shoulder forward,
and pushed straight east, across the heart of New
Jersey, in the direction of Sandy Hook. The road was
execrable, and the heat like the desert of Sahara ; but
Clinton gave his people no respite until, on the twenty-
seventh June, his entire force was concentrated round the
group of buildings, known as Monmouth Court House,
which stood mid-way between the Delaware and the
sea. The number and audacity of the riflemen in linen
frocks, who swarmed around the British bivouacs,
indicated that Colonel Morgan was on the war-path,
that Washington himself in all probability was close at
hand, and that within the next twenty-four hours the
American attack would be driven home. Sir Henry
Clinton issued orders that, at day-break next morning,
his wheeled vehicles should proceed on their way,
escorted by half the army under the command of
General von Knyphausen ; while Lord Cornwallis, with
fourteen battahons and a handful of cavalry, would
1 Clinton's march from the Delaware to Sandy Hook may be followed,
step by step, in the large map at the end of this volume.
376 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
keep the enemy in play until the train of baggage had
escaped beyond the risk of capture.^
Sunday the twenty-eighth of June, 1778, was long
remembered all over the United States as the most
sultry day which had ever been endured since mankind
learned to read the thermometer. Lord Carlisle still
lay becalmed in the Delaware River, tired of looking at
ships, which were the only sights in view ; tormented
by " gnats as large as sparrows ; " unable to sleep during
the stifling night; and unwilling to dine in company
because "■ neither hand could be spared from wiping
both neck and face every moment, and at the same
time." What was misery and discomfort beneath the
awning on a quarter-deck, amounted to nothing less
than an ever-present menace of sudden death to soldiers
marching in closely packed ranks, or running forward,
with gun and knapsack, in the hurry and excitement of
battle. The royal camp was astir at an early hour.
Not long after midnight, von Knyphausen began to
move ; and the innumerable carriages gradually wound
themselves out of the meadows where they had been
parked, and covered, in unbroken file, the whole of the
eleven miles of highway which led eastward from
Monmouth Court House to the village of Middletown.
At eight o'clock Cornwallis took the road, and was
already far advanced on his way when Charles Lee
came in sight. The American centre was a serried
mass of troops, while powerful columns hastened for-
ward, on the right and left, with an evident intention of
cutting into the procession of English waggons. Sir
Henry Clinton at once discerned that the only possible
chance of saving his convoy was to attack, and defeat,
the hostile vanguard before their main army could
arrive upon the field. He had sure information that
Washington was within no great distance ; but he
reckoned that, if he went to work in the right manner,
1 An interesting and exact account of Sir Henry Clinton's march is
contained in the record, compiled by Colonel Gerald Boyle, which the
author has been granted the invaluable privilege of studying.
MONMOUTH COURT HOUSE 377
there would be just time to get the business done.
Rising to the height of an arduous situation, he desired
CornwalUs to counter-march all his battalions, and
deploy them as fast as they returned to the scene of
action. No man alive could set a battle in array more
artistically and impressively than Lord Cornwallis.
The Foot Guards, the Light companies and Grenadier
companies, eleven regiments of the line, and some
squadrons of Dragoons, advanced across the open fields
under cover of a well-sustained fire from their artillery.
Charles Lee, as always, was deeply struck by the
military appearance of the English infantry ; but he
would gladly have chosen another point of view from
which to enjoy the spectacle. The messages which he
despatched to his brigade-commanders, in answer to
their request for orders, were dispiriting, and so per-
plexed as to ,. be almost unintelligible ; and, after
some hesitation, he set in his own person an in-
glorious example of the direction in which, under the
circumstances, it behoved the troops to march. The
Americans were soon in full retreat ; and, after some
miles had been traversed, that retreat bore a very
close resemblance to a rout. Lafayette in vain begged
for leave to halt and fight. *' Sir," (replied Lee,) " you
do not know British soldiers. We cannot stand against
them." It was an odd and unsatisfactory way of ex-
plaining matters to a very gallant officer who was a Major
General in the American army, and a Musketeer of King
Louis's Household.^
At high noon, a league to the rear of Monmouth
Court House, Washington, as he rode towards the
sound of the cannon, was encountered by a crowd of
his very best troops falHng back in confusion from
the front. The men, who were sulky and disgusted,
muttered something about General Lee's orders ; and
^ When Charles T.ee was a prisoner in New York, he told Captain
Harris, " nearly crying," that he was mistaken in thinking that the New
Englanders would tight. The young man, whose head had already been
broken by a New England bullet, was not shaken in his opinion.
378 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
none of the superior officers, whom the Commander-in-
Chief successively questioned, could give any clear
account of what had been going on. He galloped
forward until his eye lighted upon Charles Lee himself,
upon whom he at once descended " like an avenging
deity." Then, for the first and last time on record,
there blazed forth one single flash of the fire which
always burned beneath that cold and placid exterior.
He relentlessly insisted upon an answer to the very
obvious inquiry why Lee had ever undertaken a service
which he did not so much as attempt to perform ; and
History, with bated breath, admits that he called the
recreant general, to his face, *'a damned poltroon."
The vigour of his language has been boisterously and
triumphantly exaggerated by some of his more grace-
less admirers ; but George Washington's countrymen,
for the most part, received the story in awe-struck
silence. The matter may safely be left between him-
self and the Recording Angel. ^
Washington's presence restored the battle. He rallied
two of the retiring battalions, which at his bidding
faced about, and set an example of resistance. He
gave General Wayne the welcome order to plant his
division across the line of Clinton's pursuit. He rode
back and forward through a bitter fusillade, recalling
his troops to their duty in quiet and well-placed words,
and keeping all his aides-de-camp on the move with
messages to every general in his army. *' I never,"
said Alexander Hamilton, " saw him to such advantage.
What part our family acted, let others say." The
officers of Washington's staff, — dashing young South-
erners, eager for distinction, and glad of a day off from
the monotony of quill-driving, — galloped about into
the hottest corners with some damage to themselves,
and still more to their horses. There was no slackness
in the opposite ranks. Clinton, (as the phrase then
was,) " greatly exposed himself," issuing his commands
in person amidst the flying bullets. Colonel Harcourt
^ Tristram Shandy \ Volume VI., Chapter 8.
MONMOUTH COURT HOUSE 379
who, all through the retreat from Philadelphia, had
made each of his dragoons do the work of three,
showed courage and conduct under a heavy fire of
grape, and in broken ground almost impracticable for
cavalry. The battalion of English Grenadier companies
marched steadily up to a range of loop-holed farm
buildings, and a well-lined orchard fence. Their colo-
nel was killed, and the American marksmen would
not allow them to get within push of bayonet ; but they
maintained, at very short range, a fierce dispute with
the defenders.^ The British Guards, led by officers
who had played a part in the Meschianza, evinced con-
spicuous gallantry ; and Anthony Wayne, in a very
characteristic letter, plumed himself on having held his
own, in what most certainly was not a mimic combat,
against the Knights of the Burning Mountain and the
Blended Rose.
Meanwhile the whole of the large American army
had arrived upon the field, and was extending itself,
from left to right, along a range of wooded hillocks
which Sir Henry Clinton perceived to be unassailable.
Nathanael Greene, — laying aside the Quartermaster
General for that single afternoon, — had planted a
battery of cannon on an eminence from which he
enfiladed the British line with deadly effect. The long
day was far spent. The royal infantry had shot away
all their eighty rounds. Their cavalry had been very
roughly handled ; and the men, of both armies, were
dropping by sun-stroke almost as fast as by the enemy's
fire. The British General, in his official account of the
battle, stated that more than sixty of his soldiers " fell
dead as they advanced, without a wound." ^ He withdrew
1 The Americans in the barn and orchard distinctly heard Colonel
Monckton haranguing his people previous to the charge in which he was
shot dead. It is said that the grenadiers advanced to the attack with so
much precision that a cannon ball, which took the muskets of a platoon
in flank, " disarmed every man."
2 Lord Carlisle was told that several of Clinton's men "ran mad " from
the heat. A number of unwounded soldiers were found dead under
the alder-bushes along a rivulet where they had crawled for shade and
380 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
his troops from the conflict, which was no easy matter;
for the English Light Companies, together with a fine
regiment of Loyalists entitled The Queen's Rangers, had
been carried deep into the enemy's position by their
" ungovernable impetuosity," — a fault on the right side
which those many hours of heat, and toil, and slaughter
had not corrected. The British army retreated, and
bivouacked at a distance of ten or twelve furlongs
to the rear ; while the Americans lay down on their
arms, close at hand and in order of battle, with every
intention of renewing the engagement at daylight on
the morrow.
Washington and Lafayette lay on the same cloak
under a bright moon, sleepless among their sleeping
soldiers, and talking, (as they well might,) about General
Lee, and his recent proceedings. No suspicious sounds
caught their ears across the narrow space which
separated them from the hostile lines ; and yet the
royal troops were awake and alert to good purpose.
At ten in the evening their leading regiment silently
filed away to the eastward ; and, by midnight, nothing
remained in the British camp except a few badly
wounded men and officers, while the rest of the army
was already miles away on the road to Middletown. Sir
Henry Clinton had gained such a start^that his adver-
saries abandoned the pursuit as hopeless. On the first of
July he reached Sandy Hook, where Lord Howe lay
at anchor after a very rapid passage from the Capes of
the Delaware. Clinton did not take his friends on
board the fleet by surprise, for the signs of his approach
had been painted in glaring colours on the western
horizon. " The army," (wrote Lord Carlisle on the
thirtieth of June,) *' was not yet arrived. Some fires
at a distance, the usual and terrible index of their
water. The royal troops wore thick woollen clothes ; whereas many Ameri-
cans were still in thin rags, and such of them as were better equipped threw
down their packs, and fought in their shirt-sleeves. But, even so, they
suffered greatly. Washington, on several successive days, reported that
the sun had killed some of his men, and many of his horses.
MONMOUTH COURT HOUSE 38 1
motions, informed us of their position." The course
of the departing British through the townships of New
Jersey was everywhere marked by a trail of blackened
ruins. Clinton, who had the feelings of an honour-
able soldier, expressed his compunction and disgust in
a General Order of remarkable frankness. He thanked
his troops for their cheerfulness under fatigue, and
their " noble ardour " in battle ; but he confessed
himself obliged to say that the irregularity of the army
during the march had reflected much disgrace on the
discipline which ought to be the first object of an
officer's attention. Marauding had been unbridled, and
desertion rampant. No fewer than six hundred red-
coats, of whom more than three fourths were Germans,
were walking about the streets of Philadelphia within
a fortnight from the day when the royal garrison left the
city.^ Sir Henry Clinton, however, had reason to con-
gratulate himself on his performance of the work which
he had been set to do. He had lost a few hundred
men in action ; but he had killed and wounded at least
as many of the enemy. He brought off all his guns
and colours ; he saved his baggage ; and he reached
New York before the French. When Parliament voted
thanks to him, and to Lord Cornwallis, an orator of
considerable authority informed the House of Commons
that Sir Henry Clinton's retirement from Philadelphia
was " universally allowed to be the finest thing since
the war began." The retreat, beyond all contradiction,
had been successful, as retreats go ; but it was not
precisely the kind of operation which George the Third
and his Ministers had in view when they despatched
more than fifty thousand soldiers across the Atlantic to
subjugate the revolted colonies.^
1 Four hundred of them deserted in the first four days. A romantically
minded chronicler asserts that they were mostly drawn back to Phila-
delphia by " tender attachments " which they had formed there during
the winter. Lossing's Field Book of the Revolution ; Volume II.,
Chapter 5.
2 Fifty thousand was the popular contemporary estimate of the royal
forces sent out to America between 1768 and 1778. Colonel Boyle's
382 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Washington, always prone to leniency in a case
where he himself had been injured, or inefficiently
served, was disposed to overlook Charles Lee's short-
comings at Monmouth Court House. That general
might have retained his military position, and worked
fresh mischief to his country's cause, if the usual good
fortune of America had not intervened to prevent it.
Lee refused to let the question rest, and thought
it incumbent on him to send Washington a letter,
demanding a Court Martial in grandiloquent phrases,
and upbraiding him for his harshness and injustice.
"I from my heart believe," he added, "that it was not
a motion of your own breast, but instigated by some of
those dirty earwigs who will for ever insinuate them-
selves near persons in high office."^ The Court Martial
was granted; but Lee, as if his situation was not bad
enough already, must needs once more address his
Commanding Officer in a strain of elaborate and
fantastic impertinence. "You cannot," he wrote,
" afford me a greater pleasure than in giving me the
opportunity of showing to America the sufficiency
of her respective servants. I trust that the temporary
power of office, and the tinsel dignity attending it, will
not be able, by all the mists they can raise, to offuscate
the bright rays of truth." He underwent his trial for
disobedience to orders ; for writing disrespectful letters
to the Commander-in-Chief ; and for misbehaviour before
the enemy, by making an unnecessary, disorderly,
and shameful retreat. He was found guilty, and sus-
pended from holding any commission in the army for the
term of twelve months. The soldiers who, in obedience
to his orders, had sullenly and reluctantly turned
detailed calculation places the British troops at something over thirty
thousand, and the Germans at something over twenty-one thousand. In
the year 1776, upwards of twenty-three thousand men sailed for New
York, and eleven thousand five hundred for Canada.
1 Lee warned the Commander-in-Chief that he could justify his con-
duct " to the Army, to Congress, to America, and to the World in general."
Washington, with grave irony, repeated those exact words in his official
answer.
MONMOUTH COURT HOUSE 383
their backs upon a battle, grumbled because he was
not sentenced to be shot ; but Lee's career was as
effectually extinguished as if he had been delivered
over to a firing-party of Colonel Morgan's riflemen. He
never was re-employed ; and he spent the remaining
five years of his existence quarrelling with Members of
Congress and with officers of the Head Quarters Staff
and inditing satirical attacks on George Washington
which everybody read, and nobody heeded. He died
as he had lived ; for, of all his grotesque literary com-
positions, his last will and testament was the most
preposterous.^
The fog at Germantown, and Charles Lee's pusilla-
nimity at Monmouth Court House, had frustrated Wash-
ington's hopes of winning an important battle. That,
whether by fault or fate, was his usual lot. In the
course of the prolonged and dreary struggle for Ameri-
can Independence he scored very few of those master-
strokes of victory which elicit a thunder of applause
from the crowded benches of the world's amphitheatre.
His warlike successes, like his personal qualities, were
unostentatious and unsensational, but of great and
durable value. On more than one occasion, in the last
eighteen months, his strategy had not been dazzling,
nor his tactics perfection. Any painstaking military
student, without being a Clausewitz or a Jomini, can
see that Washington made mistakes, and missed chances ;
but the final result of his exertions was the total dis-
comfiture of his adversary. The King's troops, after
an effort which it was practically certain that they
would be unable to repeat, had occupied the capital
city of the rebellion, had held it for half a year, and
then had abandoned it for ever. The close of the
campaign, moreover, had been marked by an incident
of still more fatal omen to the royal cause. Sir William
Howe's manoeuvres, ever since the beginning of the war,
had been avowedly, and almost exclusively, directed to
the object of compelling the Americans to accept battle
^ An absurd passage is quoted from this document in a note on page 47
of the preceding volume of this history.
384 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION-
in the open field. " As my opinion," (so he told the
House of Commons,) ''has always been that the defeat
of the rebel army is the surest road to peace, I inva-
riably pursue the most probable means of forcing its
commander to an action." But now, at Monmouth
Court House, Washington had voluntarily placed him-
self within the reach of Clinton's sword ; and the English
general, instead of welcoming the challenge to a combat
a ontrance^ had betaken himself out of the country by
the nearest way. Conquest is impossible when the main
army of the invasion recoils from an opportunity of
fighting a decisive battle against the main army of the
defence.
Admirable had been the patience and tenacity
with which the American leader played the watching
and waiting game ; and that is a game which must be
pursued, obstinately, continuously, and undeviatingly,
until the moment is ripe for aggressive action, under
penalty of overwhelming disaster.^ Throughout the
whole of the winter Washington had been hampered
and harassed by the machinations of political and per-
sonal enemies. He knew very well what cruel and
cutting things were said in the committee-rooms and
lobbies, and even in the debating-chamber, of Con-
gress about his immobility at Valley Forge, and his
persistent refusal to assault the British redoubts in
front of Philadelphia. The men in power, who for the
time being were his employers and his masters, were
not ashamed to take a forward part in denying his
services, and depreciating his capacity. In their igno-
rance of war, and of history, they applied to him, by way
of derision and reproach, one of the most honoured
names in the military annals of the world. The Roman
Republic could show an almost interminable list of
1 " Excellent ! Quite excellent ! The study of it has given me a greater
idea of his genius than any other. Had he continued that system a little
while longer he would have saved Paris. But he wanted patience. He
did not see the necessity of adhering to defensive warfare. I have been
obliged to do it for many months together." That was Wellington's
comment on Napoleon's campaign of 1814.
MONMOUTH COURT HOUSE 385
celebrated captains who had won brilliant triumphs,
and added rich provinces to the empire ; but the Roman
people reserved their highest esteem, and their warmest
regard, for the great citizen who, under a cloud of
obloquy, had steadfastly and resolutely opposed his own
policy of caution to the daring genius of Hannibal. The
poet Ennius, in that vigorous Latin which men wrote
and spoke at the period of Rome's true greatness, has
told how the glory of Fabius increased as the years
went on because, when his country was in mortal
danger, he paid no attention to the talk of men, and
looked only to the safety of the State. ^
" True history," (wrote an eloquent Frenchman,)
** never demolishes a hero. She does not make little
that which passes for great. She contents herself with
explaining its greatness." 2 This saying, in its relation
to George Washington, is strikingly illustrated by the
narrative of the long campaign, which lasted from June
1777 to July 1778, and which covered the whole region
between Lake Champlain and Delaware Bay. The ulti-
mate success of the American arms, over all that vast
theatre of war, was mainly due to Washington's skill
and foresight, and, (in a yet more marked degree,) to
his elevation of character. He planned a comprehen-
sive scheme of operations ; he distributed the national
forces among the generals in command ; he chose for
himself the post of difficulty ; and he sent his best
troops to the help of others, careless whether he was
assisting a friend, or aggrandising a rival. He was the
first to predict the capture of Burgoyne's army ; and he
devised the measures, and supplied the means, which
brought that event to pass. Washington was silent with
regard to his own exploits and deserts ; but the grati-
tude of his fellow-countrymen needed no reminding.
They did not forget that, in three successive years, he
had thrice expelled the invader from the mainland of
1 "Non ponebat enim rumores ante salutem.
Ergo magis<juc, luagisque, viri nunc gloria crescit."
^ Letter of Prosper Merimee.
VOL. IV. ac
386 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
the United States. " What," asked Horace Walpole,
** has an army of fifty thousand men, fighting for sover-
eignty, achieved in America ? Retreated from Boston ;
retreated from Philadelphia ; laid down their arms at
Saratoga ; and lost thirteen provinces ! " That, and
nothing less, was the debt which the American Re-
public owed to the energy, the pertinacity, and the
noble self-forgetfulness of George Washington.
CHAPTER XXXVII
EUROPEAN PUBLIC OPINION. CHOISEUL. VERGENNES.
TURGOT
Graver news had seldom crossed the Atlantic ;
although the latest occurrences in America were not
closely studied in London, and their full import was
understood only by the wise. Hopes had been excited
by Burgoyne's first successes, by Howe's victory on the
Brandywine, and by the capture of Philadelphia. The
catastrophe at Saratoga had been received with disap-
pointment, and with something very nearly approaching
to dismay. But Sir Henry Clinton's retirement on New
York, which was the most significant event in the whole
war, attracted little attention in English society, and
scanty comment in the press.
Week after week, and month after month, during
the late spring and early summer of 1778, our news-
papers gave very meagre information about the British
army on the Delaware ; for the mind of Britain was
already distracted by problems demanding more instant
attention, and by dangers much nearer to her own
shores. The Morning Chronicle, and the Evening Post,
related the battle of Monmouth Court House at less
length than they bestowed upon a sham-fight at the
great militia camp which had been formed on Cox
Heath, in Kent, to provide against the imminent con-
tingency of a French invasion. Towards the end of
July, an anxious public were informed that very heavy
firing had been heard off the Lizard. *' Yesterday,"
(so the paragraph ran,) " a report confidently prevailed,
which God forbid that a tithe should be true, that
Admiral Keppel had been beat in a general engage-
387 2C 2
388 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
ment." ^ The rumour of a battle was premature ; and,
when it did take place, it was claimed as an English
victory, though among the very poorest in our naval
annals ; but we may well believe that, during a week
when home-news of this description floated in the air,
men were not inclined to devote much attention, or
regret, to the evacuation of Philadelphia.
For two centuries back, on many critical occasions,
England's foreign and warlike policy had presented a
very noble record. Queen Elizabeth assisted the United
Provinces of Holland, in their utmost need, against the
bigotry and cruelty of Spain. Oliver Cromwell inter-
fered in Continental matters, with decisive effect, in
the interests of justice, humanity, and religious freedom.
The war which WiUiam the Third fought out to the end,
and the subsequent war which he commenced, and which
Marlborough prosecuted, were both of them set going
with the express object of protecting weak European
communities from the unscrupulous and insatiable
ambition of Louis the Fourteenth. It was true, in-
deed, that George the Second's two great wars had
been undertaken by the British Cabinet from mixed
motives, amongst which national self-interest certainly
found a place; but in both cases an honourable, a
generous, and a disinterested idea possessed and actu-
ated the great mass of Englishmen. Such an idea
unquestionably inspired the exertions and sacrifices
made by our forefathers in 1742, and during the five
years that followed; — the vast subsidies transmitted to
Vienna from the British Treasury ; the glorious victory
of Dettingen ; the still more glorious reverse of Fonte-
noy ; and the visit of Commodore Martin's squadron to
the Bay of Naples, which was an exploit conceived, and
conducted to a bloodless but triumphant issue, in the
very spirit and style of the Great Protector. The main
thought and intention of our people in that arduous
struggle was a determination to save the young Em-
^ The London Daily Advertiser 'y July 24, 1778.
EUROPEAN PUBLIC OPINION 389
press Queen from insult and spoliation, and to prevent
the balance of power from being irremediably overset
by the ruin and dissolution of Austria. And Chatham's
war, which in America and the East secured enormous
acquisitions of territory for his country, presented on
the Continent of Europe, (and not unjustly,) the ap-
pearance of a public-spirited, and even a chivalrous,
enterprise. English troops fought loyally and most
successfully, and English guineas were not stinted, in
order to strengthen the hands of Prussia against the
most powerful combination of military States that ever,
for so many years together, applied themselves in con-
cert to the business of annihilating a puny neighbour.^
These striking events, and this all but continuous
course of magnanimous policy, had landed England in
a position more desirable than has ever been enjoyed
by any nation in modern times ; and for which a
parallel can only be found in the fame and popularity
of Athens after she had repelled the Persian invasion,
and before she had begun to tyrannise over her Greek
allies. When the Seven Years' War came to a termina-
tion, the influence of England throughout the Continent
of Europe was immense ; her power on the high seas
was undisputed ; and, together with these advantages,
she had contrived to retain a large measure of the
1 Hard words have often been applied to the doctrine of the Balance of
Power; but, during the century which followed the Revolution of 1688,
that doctrine excited almost as much enthusiasm as was evoked, in the
nineteenth century, by the principle of Nationality. The efforts to pre-
serve Europe from the acquisitiveness of France or Austria inspired
Englishmen, in the days of Marlborough and Chatham, with the same
kind of sympathy as their descendants felt for the Independence of
Greece, and the Unity of Italy. Robertson published his Charles the
Fifth in 1 769 ; and his Introductory Essay on the Progress of Society in
Europe, which filled the first volume, contains many allusions to the
theory of the Balance of Power. The historian apparently regarded that
theory as amcjng the most beneficent discoveries of a civilised era.
"That salutary system," (thus he described it,) "which teaches modern
politicians to take the alarm at the prospect of distant dangers, which
promjjts them to check the first encroachments of any formidable power,
dnd which renders each state the guardian, in some degree, of the rights
and independence of all its neighbours."
390 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
general good-will. She had drawn the sword so often,
and wielded it so efficaciously, on behalf of others, that
the governments, which she had protected and rescued
on the European mainland, seldom grudged her those
provinces and colonies which she had founded, or
appropriated, in distant quarters of the globe.
" I shall do well !
The people love me, and the sea is mine ;
My powers are crescent ; and my auguring hope
Says it will come to the full." ^
England, after the Peace of Paris in 1763, might very
fairly have applied to herself these verses of her own
greatest poet. Feared and hated by some nations,
esteemed and even beloved by others, she was every-
where respected, admired, and imitated. Nowhere was
she so obsequiously watched and followed as in the
capital city of her ancient, and her most formidable, foe.
*' What Cromwell wished," (thus Gibbon wrote in
March 1763,) "is now literally the case. The name of
Englishman inspires as great an idea at Paris as that of
Roman could at Carthage after the defeat of Hannibal."
The more frivolous of the French nobility copied and
borrowed our simple dress, our less gaudy and far
swifter carriages, our games at cards, the implements
of our national sports, and the jargon of our race-
course, — so far as they could frame their lips to pro-
nounce it. Those among them who were of more
exalted nature, and tougher fibre, envied the individual
liberty and responsible self-government which prevailed
in England, and the opportunities there afforded for a
strenuous and worthy public career. The pride of
young French gentlemen, (wrote the scion of a great
family in Perigord,) was piqued by the contrast be-
tween their own situation, and that of men of their age
and class beyond the Channel. " Our minds dwelt
upon the dignity, the independence, the useful and
important existence of an English peer, or of a Member
^ Anthony and Cleopatra ; Act II., Scene I.
EUROPEAN PUBLIC OPINION 39 1
of the House of Commons, and upon the proud and
tranquil freedom which appertained to every citizen of
Great Britain." ^
Such was the towering eminence which Britain
proudly occupied ; and it is an inevitable condition of
national greatness that conspicuous States, on which
the attention of mankind is concentrated, have to mind
their ways at home, as well as abroad. Small or effete
countries may be well or ill governed, their ministers
and even their monarchs may come and go, and their
constitutions may be reformed or overset, without
attracting any considerable amount of observation
outside their own confines ; but the politics of a people
who lead the world are regarded, all the world over, as
matter of universal interest and concern. The top-
heavy edifice of personal government, — which George
the Third, through the instrumentality of Bute, and
Grafton, and North, had built up from the foundation,
— was a familiar, and not a lovely, phenomenon to
educated men in every capital of Europe. All true
friends, and some high-minded enemies, of England
deplored that the energies of our rulers should be
devoted to unworthy, and worse than unprofitable,
objects, and witnessed with sincere regret the long roll
of sordid and demorahsing incidents which marked the
trail of the Middlesex Election. It was a sorry spec-
tacle to see the Government of a people which had
humbled France and Spain, had defended Germany,
and had conquered Canada and Bengal, wasting its
efficiency and its credit, twelvemonth after twelve-
month, over a miserable squabble with the voters of
^ Memoires par M. Le Cofnte de Segur, de V Academic Franfaisgy
Pair de France: Deuxieme Edition, page 140.
A young Englishman of good family, writing in the year 1774,
described how he left London, where his father never got back from
Parliament till long after midnight, and spent his whole morning cor-
recting his speech for the newspapers; and how in Paris he found men of
the highest birth leading a life of un!;roken leisure, — calling occasionally
on the King's Ministers, to exchange a few c(Mn])liments, but otherwise
knowing as little about the public affairs of Erancc as of Japan.
392 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
one very ill-used English county. England, before
this, had had her faults and her misfortunes ; but since
the Revolution of 1688, alone among the principal
nations of the world, she had been ruled by strong men
who forced their way to the front by prowess in debate,
by valuable pubUc services, and by the favourable
estimate which their fellow-countrymen formed of their
wisdom and capacity. That, however, was the case no
longer. Second-rate, and third-rate, place-holders now
trifled with the welfare and honour of the country;
while their betters were inexorably excluded from
office because they were unacceptable to the King.
Patriots and statesmen like Edmund Burke, Lord Cam-
den, and Sir George Savile, were left unemployed ;
and England was governed by such sinister or paltry
figures as Sandwich and Rigby, Lord Weymouth and
Lord George Germaine.
This disastrous condition of things was vividly
brought home to the perception of Europe by the
notoriety of Lord Chatham's disfavour at Court. The
ex-minister, whose commanding genius had laid France
at the feet of England, was incomparably the most
highly regarded of English citizens, all the Continent
over; and nowhere was that sentiment so pronounced
as in France itself. French people of fashion were for
ever pestering British tourists for an authentic anecdote
about Pitt, or for a few specimen sentences from his
latest oration ; and the presence during a single even-
ing of one among his kinsmen, or even his parlia-
mentary supporters, was of itself sufficient to make the
fortune of any drawing-room in Paris. Lord Chatham's
reputation as a public speaker was never so widely
diffused as during the later stages of the Wilkes con-
troversy, and the opening scenes of the American
Revolution. Magnificent fragments of his rhetoric,
dating from that period, are not even yet submerged in
the sea of oblivion which, mercifully for human endur-
ance, in most cases drowns the oratory of the past ;
and samples of his eloquence, while it still was fresh,
EUROPEAN PUBLIC OPINION 393
were freely quoted, and enthusiastically admired, by
foreigners who had learned to read our language. And
now, at the summit of his fame, — in the prime, as
Berlin and Paris believed, of his intellect and his
vigour, — he was denied the opportunity of governing
his native island, and saving from dismemberment that
Colonial empire which he had enlarged and strengthened,
for no other public reason than because he stood,
squarely and manfully, for the independence of the
British Parliament.^
For some years before the American Revolution
broke out, the influence of England abroad had been
sapped and weakened by the growing deterioration of
her internal politics. And now, after a decade marked
by maladministration and popular discontent at home,
Lhe new methods of government had produced their
appropriate fruit in the alienation of our colonies. On
that question one and the same view was held by every
rational foreigner, and was pointedly expressed by
those F'rench writers who then were the recognised inter-
preters of European thought. ^' Your ministers," wrote
the Abbe Morellet to Lord Shelburne, " have not per-
ceived that, by enslaving and ruining America, they
are drying up an abundant source of wealth and pros-
perity, of which England would always have secured
the largest share ; for such would have been the happy
consequence of natural and unforced relations between
a mother-country, and a colony inhabited by a people
1 While Horace Walpole was at Paris, in the autumn of 1765, his
correspondence is full of casual, and occasionally very humorous, allusions
to the awe with which William Pitt was regarded in that city. "The
night before last," (Walpcjle wrote to Pitt's sister,) "I went to the
Luxembourg ; and, if I had conquered America in Germany, I could not
have been received with more attention." Walpole gave an unlucky
Scotch baronet a very bad half-hour by assuring a party of eager, and
curious, fme ladies, most untruthfully, that the poor gentleman was an
excellent mimic, and could reproduce Pitt's speaking better than any man
alive. When the terrible wolf of the Gevaudan was brought dead to
Paris, the animal lay in state in the Que n's antechamber, and "was
exhibited to us with as much parade as if it was Mr. Pitt."
394 ^-^^ AMERICAN REVOLUTION
sprung from her race, and speaking her tongue. Those
ministers resemble a territorial landlord who, in order
to maintain certain honorary rights which bring him in
little or no cash, should make war on his own tenants,
impounding their teams and setting fire to their barns,
with the result that his farmers would thenceforward
be unable to till their fields, and pay their rent." It is
true that, in our own day, an author may occasionally
be found, in one country or another, who defends the
policy of Lord North's cabinet as having been laudable
and judicious. But, while the affair was actually in
progress, all the civilised world outside our own island
held that policy to be wrong and foolish : and it is the
opinion of contemporaries, and not of posterity, which
has an influence on the issue of the event.
Then came the Declaration of Independence. There
exists among mankind an innate disposition to believe
that people know their own business best, and a readi-
ness to accept the description which they give of them-
selves in preference to any which is given of them by
others. When America, speaking with an exuberant
emphasis which had no example in the State-papers of
the Old World, asserted for herself a separate and dis-
tinct place among the family of nations, there was a
general inclination, all Europe over, to take her at her
word, and acknowledge her right to be the arbitress of
her own destiny, and the mistress of her own future.
The claim which she embodied in her famous manifesto
was soon made good by arms. Thrice had Great Britain
put forth her full strength against the colonists, and
three campaigns had been fiercely contested. In the
first campaign King George lost Boston ; the second had
ended with the defeat of his German auxiliaries at
Trenton ; and the third had resulted in one of his armies
being captured, while the other was driven back into the
city of New York. What had hitherto been the sup-
pression of a rebellion now became, in the eyes of for-
eign critics, the invasion of a country. The conflict was
regarded no longer as a civil war, but as a war of con-
EUROPEAN PUBLIC OPINION 395
quest : and conquest is never popular except among the
conquerors.^
The Enghsh had hitherto been regarded by other na-
tions as the most sagacious people of modern times. A
century and a half of bold and judicious colonisation, and
three quarters of a century made notable by a series of
amazingly prosperous wars, had secured for them nearly
all the outlying districts of the globe that were then worth
having. Their proceedings had been characterised by
instinctive common-sense, and by obedience to the laws
of a broadly considered and sound economy. All those
immense enterprises, which they had undertaken and car-
ried through, were well within their compass, and amply
repaid them for their ungrudging expenditure of that pub-
lic money which, at the decisive hour, they never spared.
But now, in profound peace, at the height of unparalleled
prosperity, they had committed themselves to an internal
war against a part of their own empire, — a war marked
by all the folly of a Crusade, without the piety, — of
which the end must be distant, and the event, whatever
shape it might ultimately assume, could not fail to be
calamitous to Great Britain. The national reputation
for prudence and shrewdness was grievously impaired
in the eyes of Europe ; and our countrymen had
thrown away a yet more valuable advantage than that
of ranking as the cleverest race in history. The
Declaration of Independence had aroused an unusual
emotion in the mind of Europe. Jefferson's lofty and
glowing phrases resounded through France and Ger-
many in accents strange and novel, but singularly, and
even mysteriously, alluring to the ear. The depressed
^ Albert Sorel, in his account of the repulse of Brunswick's inva-
sion, makes an interesting allusion to the respect felt in Europe for the
young American Republic, after it had successfully endured the baptism
of fire :
" Les Fran9ais ont supporte I'epreuve decisive, celle qui a fait la ruine
des Polonais, et la puissance des Americains. Cette nation a vu les
etrangers sur son territoire, et elle est restee unie, inebranlable dans ses
idees. 11 faut renoncer au fol espoir d'enchatner une nation enti^re."
396 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
and unprivileged classes in a feudal society, which
already had arrived within half a generation of the up-
rising and overturn of 1789, hailed with delight from
across the ocean that audacious proclamation of their
own silent hopes and lurking sympathies. In previous
wars England had figured as a champion of the weak,
and a fearless assertor of the common liberties against
the misuse of power by any State, or conspiracy of
States ; but now, to the sorrow of her admirers, she was
committed to the task of crushing the political life out
of a group of Republics which, in the view of Europe,
had as much right to free and uncontrolled self-govern-
ment as the cantons of Switzerland. She had forfeited
the general respect and esteem which formerly was her
portion ; and she was to learn erelong that, at a grave
conjuncture, respect and esteem are among the most
valuable military assets upon which a nation can reckon.
Certain incidents of the American war, — which were
forced upon the attention of the European populations,
and in some respects very seriously affected their com-
fort, their security, and their commercial interests, —
aggravated that disapproval of King George's policy
which they so early, and so generally, felt. The more
powerful and self-respecting governments blamed and
despised those petty princes who had sold their troops
for service against our revolted colonists ; while all
civilians, and almost all true soldiers, were profoundly
shocked by the cruelty and injustice inseparable from
the traffic. ''The Anspach and Bayreuth regiments
were put on board boats at Ochsenfurt ; but so closely
packed that many of the men had to stand up all night.
We sang hymns, and had prayers. The next day,
many of the men threatening to refuse, the non-com-
missioned officers were ordered to use heavy whips to
enforce obedience, and later to fire on the malcontents,
so that some thirty were wounded." That is the ac-
count given by no political agitator, but by a musketeer
who served King George bravely, and not at all re-
luctantly, throughout the later years of the American
EUROPEAN PUBLIC OPINION 397
war.^ It was little wonder if such scenes as these, —
occurring along the main roads of Europe, and on the
banks of her navigable rivers, at a time when there was
peace within her own borders, — filled quiet, kindly
citizens with pity and disgust. The Margrave of Ans-
pach, who had been called in to quell the mutiny,
escorted his troops to the seaport where they were
embarked for New York ; and it is on record that he
was hooted by mobs, and pelted with reproachful
epithets, in the streets of every Dutch town which he
traversed on his homeward journey.
So it was on land ; and, in the department of
maritime affairs, the American war speedily kindled
burning questions which flared up into something not
far short of a universal conflagration. The sudden and
complete extinction of the great, the increasing, and
the exceptionally profitable trade between England
and her colonies opened out an enticing prospect to the
cupidity of foreign manufacturers and foreign ship-
owners. Warlike stores rose at once to famine prices
in America ; and, if the rebellious colonies had not the
hard dollars wherewith to pay those prices, at any rate
there was plenty of Virginian tobacco which might be
exported as a substitute for gold and silver. The
multitude of New England sailors, who in former wars
had helped to man British fleets, now shipped them-
selves on board the privateers which preyed upon
British commerce. Privateering on a large scale, and
in distant waters, is impracticable unless captains of
predatory vessels can find a port in which they are
allowed to sell their prizes ; and such ports, situated in
the European territories, or the colonial dependencies,
of France, and Spain, and Holland, were soon placed
at the disposal of the American corsairs with the con-
^ Stephen Popp''s Journal, 1 777-1783; published by Joseph G. Rosen-
garten. After relating the mournful and clamorous partings between the
young villagers, and the parents from whom they were torn, the writer
goes on to say : ** Some of the soldiers were glad, and I was of their
number, for I had long wanted to see something of the world."
398 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
nivance of the local authorities. Under these circum-
stances the British Government had recourse to their
own interpretation of the code which regulated the
power of naval search, and the enforcement of naval
blockades. They insisted upon a large, and in some
cases a very disputable, extension of the list of articles
included in the category of Warlike Stores ; and their
narrow and rigid definition of the immunities to be
enjoyed by neutral vessels was much more agreeable
to the captains of their own frigates than to Dutch, or
Danish, or Scandinavian, or Russian ship-owners and
ship-masters. Britain, in all particulars, revived and
put in practice the extreme theory of her maritime
rights ; and such was the nature of the world-wide
contest in which she was engaged that it was difficult
for her, if not impossible, to allow those rights to
sleep.
Every week that sped, — and, as the war progressed,
almost every day, — brought the news of some high-
handed act on the one side, and some flagrant breach
of the impartiality due from non-combatants on the
other. On the deep seas, at the mouth of a Baltic
estuary, or off the bar of a West Indian harbour, trans-
actions were passing which continually added fuel to
the flame of international resentment. The British
people, sometimes with more anger than uneasiness,
saw one European neighbour after another converted
into an overt enemy, or, at best, into a malevolent and
bitterly prejudiced umpire. Before the close of 1780
she was at war with three of the naval Powers ; and
the others had drawn themselves together into a league
which called itself The Armed Neutrality, but which had
very little that was neutral about it outside the title.
Portugal alone retained, — and, (grateful little nation
that she was,) for a long time ventured to manifest, —
her ancient predilection for our country ; but the
pressure at length became too strong for her fidelity,
and Portugal threw in her lot with the rest. Ben-
jamin Franklin could truthfully write from Paris that
CHOISEUL 399
England had no friends on that side of the Straits of
Dover, and that no nation wished her success, but rather
desired to see her effectually humbled. Nor was
disapprobation of Lord North's action in America
confined to Continental, or to foreign, lands; for that
sentiment had long been dominant in Ireland. The
Catholics indeed, so far as in their sad and depressed
condition they had any politics at all, were mostly for
King George as against the Whig opposition and the
Philadelphia Congress. But, throughout all the four
Irish provinces, the coercion of New England was
intensely distasteful to the public opinion of the
governing classes ; and in that century, and that
country, Protestant and Landlord opinion alone counted.
*' I heard t'other day," said Horace Walpole, "from
very good authority that all Ireland was * America
mad.' That was the expression. It was answered :
* So is all the Continent.' Is it not odd that this island
should, for the first time since it was five years old,
be the only country in Europe in its senses ? " ^
By the time that our American rebellion had lasted
a twelvemonth, Great Britain could not count upon any
friend, or any possible ally, among the leading European
nations ; while the most powerful of them all was her
busy and irreconcilable enemy. France, for a long while
back, had been in that mood which renders a proud and
gallant people the most dangerous of neighbours to a
victorious rival. Chatham, and his English, had wrenched
away her colonies, had expelled her from North America,
and had ousted her from any prospect of influence or
empire in the peninsula of Hindostan. Her troops had
been often and disgracefully beaten, her squadrons
driven off the ocean, her commerce annihilated, and her
finances ruined. Her consciousness of inferiority was
kept alive by the humiUations to which she was sub-
jected in her intercourse with other Powers. She was
1 Walpole to the Countess of Ossory; Strawberry Hill, June 25, 1776.
400 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
still obliged, in one of her own home ports, to endure the
presence and the supervision of a British Commissioner,
whose duty it was to assure himself that no fortifications
were erected on the front which faced the sea.^ So
weak that she could not insist upon her right to take a
hand in the game of European diplomacy, she was forced
to overlook and condone the lucrative iniquities which, in
the black and shameful year of 1772, Russia, Austria,
and Prussia combined to perpetrate at the expense of a
feeble and unhappy nation. It was impossible, (said
Lafayette,) for Frenchmen of a later generation even to
conceive the political and military nullity to which their
country had been reduced by the Seven Years' War,
and by her enforced acquiescence in the partition of
Poland.
France had suffered terribly, and had been stripped
bare ; but she had learned self-knowledge in the school
of misfortune, and was quietly and resolutely intent
upon recovering the self-respect which she had lost.
The more thoughtful and capable among her statesmen,
her sailors, and her soldiers were assiduously engaged
in amending the discipline, and increasing the fighting
strength, of her fleets and armies. The master-workman
in the task of national recuperation and reconstruction
was the Due de Choiseul. A politician, who aspires to
be a ruler, must travel towards his goal by the avenues
which are in customary use in his own country, and
among his own contemporaries ; and Choiseul had risen
to the summit of affairs, — as openly and avowedly as an
English nobleman would set himself to gain place and
power by making speeches in Parliament, — through the
good graces of a Royal mistress. He was a prime
favourite, and a most serviceable partisan, of Madame
de Pompadour ; but none the less was he a genuine
patriot. He had his full share in the onerous respon-
sibiHty of starting the Seven Years' War, and he did not
^ A stipulation to this effect with regard to the port of Dunkirk, dating
from the Peace of Utrecht, was revived and reestablished in the year
1763 by a special article in the Treaty of Paris.
CHOISEUL 401
greatly shine in the conduct of it ; but he had taken
to heart the stern lessons which that war had taught.
In 1 761, — the mid period of the struggle, when the
naval power of France had already been destroyed, —
Choiseul, with rare foresight and fixity of purpose,
commenced the building of war-vessels on an extensive
scale, and continued to build with redoubled vigour
after hostilities terminated. By the year 1770 sixty-four
French sail of the line, and fifty frigates, were actually
afloat.^ When once the ships were provided, there
was no lack of men. Colbert had long ago devised,
and Choiseul had now perfected, an accurate register
of the entire sea-going population ; and a rigorous, but
equitable, conscription obviated the necessity of the
press-gang, and supplied the war-fleet with the very
pick and flower of French sailors. A matter of hardly
less importance, when dealing with an element where,
after seamanship has done its very utmost, cannon must
decide the day, was the organisation of a marine
artillery; and the French Admiralty in 1767 enlisted
a body of ten thousand naval gunners, " systematically
drilled once a week during the ten years still to inter-
vene before the next war with England."^
Choiseul's ships were built to encounter the battle
and the storm, and they were handled by officers who
understood and loved their calling. Unwarmed by the
beams of Court favour, and patient and loyal under
the vexation of cruelly slow promotion, they were as
blunt and rough, as brave and manly, and as whole-
hearted in their devotion to duty, as the heroes of
Tobias Smollett's naval stories. True sea-dogs, or rather
sea-wolves, (for so their countrymen preferred to call
them,)^ they knocked about the Gulf of Lyons and the
^ Histoire de La Marine Franfaise, par E. Chevalier ; Livre I.,
Chapitre 2.
2 Mahan's Influence of Sea Power upon History ; Chapter 9.
Chevalier ; Preface, Livre I.
* The Memoirs of the Due des Cars give a most interesting picture of
his valiant brother, who was ** un vrai loup de mer, et d'un nature!
extr8mement sec."
VOL. IV. 2D
402 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Bay of Biscay in all weathers, and on every sort of
errand. According to their notion it was better for
King Louis that he should lose a few spars and top-
sails, or even an occasional ship's company of sailors,
than that his frigates should lie safe and idle in harbour
with inexperienced captains, and crews who were no
better than landsmen. And so it came about that the
French marine was never so efficient, before or since,
as at the commencement of the war which arose out
of the American Revolution ; while the sea power of
Great Britain had been brought down to a very low
point by the incompetence and heedlessness of the
British Cabinet. Lord North and Lord Sandwich
starved the dockyards, and reduced the seamen, at
a time when they were pursuing a Colonial policy
which plunged their country into a desperate contest
with all the other great navies of the world. Howe
and Rodney, by consummate strategy and splendid
victories, at length restored the maritime supremacy
of England ; but, during the space of four years, the
French fleets and squadrons, commanded by zealous
and enterprising Admirals, — and in the case of the
Bailli de Suffren, by a naval leader of very high
quality, — held their own, and something more than
their own, in the Mediterranean Sea, and on the
Atlantic and Indian oceans.
A scantier measure of success attended Choiseul's
efforts to regenerate the army, which had become
a veritable hot-bed of privilege, of indolence, and of
almost unfathomable incapacity. There was a sharp
and striking contrast between the conditions under
which Frenchmen served their King on land and on
water. The Chevalier des Cars, who afterwards became
the Duke, began his career in life as a naval officer ;
and, as has happened to others, he made all the better
soldier for it afterwards. While he was still a sailor,
the young fellow injured his health during two hard
winters at sea in the narrow quarters, and the ineffable
discomfort, of an eighteenth century cruiser. Then
CHOISEUL 403
he obtained a commission in the Cavalry ; and, after
a short apprenticeship with his regiment, he repaired
to Paris, where he led an agreeable existence amidst
a round of theatres and supper-parties, varied by
excursions to Versailles with the object of taking part
in the royal stag-hunts, and dancing attendance on
the Comte d'Artois. The Chevalier was nominated
a Colonel of Dragoons within a year and a half of
the time when he first joined the army ; and, on the
evening of the same day, he had the enviable honour
of being selected from a crowd of courtiers to hold the
candle while the King was undressing. In the meanwhile
his elder brother, the Baron des Cars, who had served
with credit at sea through the whole of the English
war, and had more than once commanded a frigate,
still ranked as a plain lieutenant. If the Baron had
been a musketeer, or a Gendarme, of the Royal House-
hold he might have been a Major General at five and
twenty. All the coveted prizes of a military career were
for men, and sometimes even for children, of quality.^
The upper grades in a French regiment were occupied
by Viscounts and Marquises ; while the hard work was
done by veterans of low degree, and often of great
though ill-rewarded merit, who were distinguished from
their high-born comrades by the somewhat ironical
appellation of ''officers of fortune." ^ It must be
admitted that troops so commanded were queer allies
for the sturdy and uncompromising Republicans of
Connecticut and Massachusetts.
The French army, with all its faults, contained
^ The Comte de Segur's father commanded a regiment when only
nineteen years of age. A son of the Marechal de Richelieu was made a
colonel at seven; and his Major was a boy of twelve.
'^ This invidious system was resuscitated in the French army after the
Restoration. Paul Louis Courier, in the year 1820, represents himself as
comforting an old Sergeant Major, who had fought under Napoleon, by
reminding him that he might some dav be an officer. "An officer of
fortune I " was the reply. " You little know what that means ! I had
rather drive a plough than become a lieutenant in my own regiment in
order to be bullied by the nobles."
2D 2
404 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
plenty of valour and chivalry ; and Choiseul exerted
himself to introduce into it any reforms and improve-
ments which were compatible with the aristocratic
character of the miUtary hierarchy. Close attention
was thenceforward bestowed upon the recruiting, the
re-mounts, the drill, the manoeuvres, the clothing, and
the weapons. Regiments of the line, one and all, were
dressed in the same uniform ; and in 1777 the infantry
were supplied with a type of musket so excellent that,
after some alterations in the mechanism, it held its
ground through the Napoleonic wars, and up to the
middle of the nineteenth century. The new firelock
weighed only eleven pounds, which in those days was
a miracle of lightness ; and when, (as was ordinarily
the case in battle,) a soldier dispensed with the ceremony
of taking aim, he could discharge five shots a minute.^
The officers were encouraged to instruct themselves in
the tenets of the Potsdam school, which was then
supposed to be in possession of all attainable human
knowledge relating to the science of war. The great
master of that school, however, took very good care
that only a few exoteric fragments of his doctrine
should be imparted to his foreign disciples. French
colonels and generals were at full liberty to borrow the
Prussian methods of manipulating troops on parade ;
but they were allowed to learn from Frederic the Great
" nothing except his most elementary and least essential
lessons." 2 A French Minister of War, in the enthusiasm
of imitation, empowered regimental officers to adopt
the German custom of chastising privates with the flat
of the sabre ; as if that pecuHar institution had been
the secret of victory at Zorndorf and at Rossbach.
Two subalterns of high birth and great promise, who
afterwards were admirable soldiers, went so far as to
shut themselves up in their lodgings, and belabour each
other, turn and turn about, until they had ascertained
^ Bonaparte en Italie: Felix Bouvier; Chapitre i, Section 2.
'^ Memoir es par M. Le Comte de Segur \ Paris, 1825; Tome I^
Page 128.
CHOISEUL 405
"the impression made by blows from the flat of the
sword upon a strong, brave, and healthy man." The
discussion of military problems became the fashion of
the day, even beyond exclusively military circles ; and
a dispute which raged over the question of the attack
in column, and the attack in line, aroused almost
as keen partisanship in Paris as the musical contro-
versy between the faction of Gluck, and the faction of
Piccini.
Choiseul, with the vigilance of a practised diplo-
matist, had long watched for an opportunity of bringing
about a collision with England. During the later months
of 1770 a difficulty arose, in reference to the Falkland
Islands, between the British and the Spanish govern-
ments ; and the Bourbon of Spain was prepared to assert
his claim by arms, if the Bourbon of France would back
him in the quarrel. Choiseul used every endeavour to
prevent an amicable settlement, and to create a war ;
but his day of Court favour, and backstairs influence,
was past and gone. The bright, particular star which
was then dominant, — the cynosure by which every
wary French statesman was careful to steer his course,
— shone with a pacific, and not with a red and angry,
lustre. Madame de Pompadour, in days gone by, had
consented to plunge France into war if only the
Empress of Austria would call her cousin. But
Madame du Barry, unlike her more ambitious pre-
decessor, was frankly and contentedly disrespectable.
Unable to induce as many as six French ladies of rank
to visit her, she entertained no hope whatever of being
admitted into the family of European sovereigns.^ She
detested Choiseul as a serious man, and a masterful
minister; as a kill-joy in the class of society which
frequented her apartments ; and as an advocate of large
armaments, and of an open breach with England.
Madame du Barry had learned just enough of politics
to be aware that a war would cost a great deal of
'^V^^'^o\t'% Memoirs of the Reign of George the Third \ Volume IV.,
Chapter S.
406 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
money, and would render it less easy for her to lay
her hands on the millions of crowns which were
indispensable to her jovial, and prodigal, existence.
She made up her mind that Choiseul should go ; and
a change of government was effected by that process
which France, in the reign of Louis the Fifteenth,
regarded as the strict constitutional method. The
King's mistress said a word to an Abbe who had access
to the royal ear; the Abbe suggested a course of
action to the King ; and the King summoned the
minister into his presence, and demanded an account
of the international situation. When Choiseul had
expounded his policy, his sovereign's face " became livid,
and he cried out in a fury, * Monsieur, I have told you
that I would not have a war.' " Choiseul was dismissed
from office ; the disagreement about the Falkland
Islands was patched up ; and a belief that peace was
secured, until the throne of France had another
occupant, universally prevailed in Paris, and in
London likewise. At Brooks's club, in May 1774,
Mr. Edward Foley betted Mr. Charles Fox fifty guineas
that England would be at war with France " before
this day two years, supposing Louis the Fifteenth dead."
Almost in the same month, the same view was expressed
by a much greater man. " I little thought," (so Lord
Chatham wrote from his Somersetshire home,) "that
I should form daily wishes for the health and life
of His Most Christian Majesty. I believe now that
no French subject of the masculine gender prays
so devoutly for the preservation of his days as I do,
in my humble village. I consider the peace as hanging
on this single life, and that life not worth two years'
purchase."
If wars of retaliation can be staved off during
a sufficient period of time, the most passionate
aspirations for reprisal and revenge may die away,
and be succeeded by friendlier sentiments. That,
VERGENNES 407
within our own experience, has been the case with
the French Republic and the German Empire ; and
the same circumstances might have produced the same
happy effect on the relations between France and England
in the generation which followed the conclusion of the
Peace of Paris. Frenchmen, smarting under recent
defeat, cherished the notion of a fresh appeal to the
ordeal of battle ; but prudence kept them quiet. The
warlike power of Great Britain was enormous ; and the
British colonies in America, growing rapidly in wealth
and population, were more than ever capable of
contributing, in the day of need, a most formidable
addition to the naval and military strength of the
mother-country. If only the concert between the whole
English-speaking race, on both sides of the Atlantic,
remained unbroken, France might in the end have
accepted the accomplished fact, and diverted her energies
from the preparations of war to the pursuits of peace.
But the statesmanship of George the Third's ministers
proved unequal to the task of keeping the national
inheritance bound together in voluntary and indissoluble
union ; and the revolt of our colonies afforded an irre-
sistible temptation to the martial ardour, and the patriotic
resentment, of the French army and the French people.
When the Americans flew to arms in the early
months of 1775, there was already a new reign in
France ; and there was a new France also. Nothing
so instantaneous, nothing so exceptional and peculiar
in its character, as the intellectual Renaissance which
immediately followed upon the death of Louis the
Fifteenth has occurred in any age or country. The
influence of the movement was most visible in the
privileged class ; but that class was a nation in itself,
for it included a hundred and forty thousand men and
women, belonging to at least five and twenty thousand
noble families.^ Never, (wrote a most able historian,) did
a generation attain its majority with an equipment of ideas
^ VAncien Regime^ par H. Taine, dc I'Academic Fran^aisc ;
Chapitre II., Section I.
408 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
and impressions more utterly opposed to those of their
parents than the sons of the French nobility during the
opening years of Louis the Sixteenth's reign. ^ It was
a generation which had read, or at all events had bought,
the Encyclopaedia; which derived its views on public
right and public policy from Montesquieu, its emotions
and aspirations from Rousseau, and its theology from
the Philosophical Dictionary of Voltaire. Frenchmen
of good family, who survived the great Revolution,
looked regretfully and wistfully back to the artificial,
irresponsible, and the intensely enjoyable lives which
they led towards the beginning of the fourth quarter
of the eighteenth century. Unobservant of the ominous
fact that doctrines, with which they amused themselves
as a pastime, had permeated those vast masses of their
less fortunate dependents and inferiors to whom
Freedom, and Equality, and Justice were terms fraught
with very serious meaning indeed, the younger nobles, •
fearless about the future, extracted the quintessence of
all that was delightful from every phase and aspect of
the present. On their country estates, among their
peasants, and land-stewards, and gamekeepers, they still
retained a substantial remnant of feudal power. At
Versailles they basked in the sunshine of the Court, and
secured their share of places, and pensions, and promo-
tions. When they repaired to the camp, the mere posses-
sion of a great name placed them in the highest ranks
of the military service. And meanwhile they held them-
selves free to mingle, at Parisian supper-tables, with
all that was brilliant in untitled circles on terms of
a pleasant imitation of plebeian equality. That is
the picture drawn long afterwards by one of their
own number. **We passed," (so the Comte de Segur
wrote,) '' the short years of our spring-time in a round
of illusions. Liberty, royalty, aristocracy, democracy,
ancient prejudices, bold and unfettered thought, novelty
and privilege, luxury and philosophy, — everything
conspired to render our days happy ; and never was
1 Doniol's History \ Volume I., Page 635.
VERGENNES 409
a more terrible awakening preceded by sweeter sleep,
and by more seductive dreams." ^
The solitary grievance of these young patricians
was that they were excluded from the government of
the State ; for it was an established tradition in the
French Court that age and wisdom went together.
Youth pushed its way everywhere outside the royal
Council-Chamber, which was closed against all except
elderly Ministers. But the members of the rising genera-
tion had, in truth, little reason to complain. They were
not fully cognisant of their own power. As individuals
they were, indeed, kept outside the administration ;
but their influence as a class, for good or evil, was
nothing short of omnipotent. The active force in French
politics which alone mattered, and before which, in the
last resort, the monarch and his advisers were com-
pelled to bow, was the public opinion of the fashion-
able world; and, in June and July 1775, the current
of that opinion ran with a vehemence and unanimity
which carried all before it. Events were taking place at
Boston and Philadelphia which usurped the attention,
and touched the imagination, of everyone who had a
thought to spare from his own selfish pleasures. The
older men, whose animosity towards England had been
embittered by two desperate wars, and by the sacrifices
and ignominies of a dishonourable peace, caught eagerly
at so unique a chance of inflicting a deadly wound on
the pride and strength of the hereditary enemy. The
younger men were all on fire to go crusading to Amer-
ica. Dependent on their parents for a fixed allowance,
which seldom left them with cash in pocket, they con-
trasted their own position with the good fortune of
Lafayette, who had come into his property early, and
who was able to charter his own ship, and select his own
^ Memoires par M. Le Comte de Segur ; Tome I., Page 27. Such, in
its essence, was the life of the great English Whigs during the first half of
the nineteenth century. " What enviable men you are ! " said a French
politician to the owners of Bowood and Castle Howard. " You dwell in
palaces, and you lead the people."
4IO THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
companions in arms. They envied even such unlucky
heroes as Pulaski and Kosciusko, who, after the ruin
of their national cause at home, had shaken the dust
of Poland from their feet, and gone across the western
ocean to fight for the liberty of others. The tidings
of Lexington reached the Baths of Spa at the precise
period of midsummer when the great world had assem-
bled to take the waters. That town was then "the
coffee-house of Europe," to which French ladies and
gentlemen resorted on a pretext of health, but in reality
for the purpose of maintaining relations with those
important people of other countries who, in the eighteenth
century, combined to form one immense aristocracy of
birth and fashion. When the fighting began at Boston
it was a strange and novel spectacle to see ** the repre-
sentatives of every European kingdom united by a lively
and friendly interest in subjects who had risen in revolt
against a King."
Almost everyone, who was somebody, in Paris or
at Versailles, had American sympathies ; and nobody
was at pains to conceal them. The new reign had
relaxed the springs of despotic authority, had unpeopled
the Bastille, and had set all tongues free to criticise and
argue. The courtiers were not afraid of the King;
and other members of the royal family were afraid of
the courtiers, who seldom failed to impose their own
view of politics upon those above them. The Comte
d' Artois had been powerfully affected by the craze which
was known as Anglomania. He is said to have evinced
his respect and esteem for our nation by refusing to
make bets with any except Englishmen ; and that was
no barren or valueless compliment, for he had some-
times lost as much as six thousand Louis d'or at a single
race-meeting.^ And yet, as soon as the frequenters of
the CEil de Boeuf began to take sides, — or, more prop-
erly speaking, to take one side, — in the American
controversy, the Comte d' Artois, Prince of the Blood
though he was, had no choice but to sink his English
1 London Evening Post of February 1777.
VERGENNES 4II
proclivities, and declare himself a " Bostonian " with
the rest. The young Queen had not been educated as
a patroness of rebels. She was brought up by a mother
who, of all sovereigns that ever lived, was perhaps the
most indefatigable and conscientious assertor of the doc-
trine that people should stay quietly where their rulers
had placed them. Marie Antoinette's favourite brother,
and the only person on earth of her own generation
by whom she would submit to be lectured, was the
Emperor Joseph the Second ; and Joseph regarded a
monarch who encouraged disaffection in the British
colonies as a traitor to his own caste. When an attempt
was made to enlist his good-will on behalf of the Amer-
ican insurgents, he coldly replied that his vocation in
life was to be an aristocrat. But the influence of her
Austrian family over the Queen's mind was not strong
enough to preserve her from the contagion of the new
ideas. Her most intimate associates had always been
women ; and the warmest advocates of American liberty
were to be found among a sex which never is half-
hearted in partisanship. "Woman," (wrote a French
historian under the Second Empire,) *' in our sad day
the prime agent of reaction, then showed herself young
and ardent, and out-stripped the men in zeal for
freedom." ^ Marie Antoinette obeyed the impulse which
pervaded the society around her, and threw herself
into the movement with frank and vivid enthusiasm.
Long afterwards, when the poor lady had fallen upon
very evil days, one of her determined political antago-
nists expressed himself as bound by justice and grati-
tude to acknowledge that **it was the Queen of France
who gave the cause of America a fashion at the French
Court." 2
The warlike emotions which agitated the public mind
exhaled themselves, as such emotions always do, in angry
and contemptuous reflections on the apathy and timidity
^ Uistoire de France par J. Michelet ; Tome XIX., Chapitre 14.
2 Paine's Rights of Man.
412 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
of the government. The French Ministers, however,
were prepared to extract the utmost advantage from
a situation which they understood very much better
than any of the fine ladies and gentlemen who were
inveighing against their excess of caution and their
culpable indifference to the honour of the country. The
responsible rulers of France had taken their measures
silently, vigorously, adroitly, and most unscrupulously ;
and they had no objection whatever to being accused of
backwardness, and even of pusillanimity, by foolish and
noisy people outside the Cabinet. The war of aggres-
sion against England, which they had in contemplation,
was so flagrantly unjustifiable, and so entirely unpro-
voked, that they were willing to present the appearance of
having been driven into violent courses by an outburst
of popular clamour and passion. The philosophical
circles of Paris might be in a whirl of cosmopolitan
excitement about the emancipation of a people from
its tyrants, and the universal brotherhood of the human
race ; but the official advisers of Louis the Sixteenth
descried in the American rebellion nothing except an
opportunity for promoting the national interests of
France, and for maiming and enfeebling the British
Empire. That had been the central object of French
statesmanship for three generations back ; and the
Prime Minister, the Comte de Maurepas, who had already
passed his seventy-third birthday, was of an age which
inclined him to pursue a continuous foreign policy. The
old courtier saunters across the early pages of Carlyle's
French Revolution under the guise of a frivolous votary
of wit and pleasure ; " his cloak well adjusted to the
wind, if so be he may please all persons." That is the
conventional portrait of Maurepas which posterity has
accepted, in his ov/n country and in ours. Neverthe-
less there was a more serious side to his character.
Through the whole of a long life he never trimmed or
trifled over any question connected with the efficiency
of the French fleet and army ; and he had been an
early, and a persistent, naval reformer under rebuffs
VERGENNES 413
and discouragements which would have daunted an
insincere or a timid man. In 1776 the edge of his
patriotism remained as keen as ever ; but his power of
work was impaired, and his bodily force abated. The
burden of the crisis rested on the very capable shoulders
of a younger colleague.^
The Comte de Vergennes had been French Ambas-
sador at Constantinople when the Peace of Paris was
signed. He felt the defeat of his country as men feel
a grave personal misfortune. But his patriotic concern
and mortification did not sink to the level of despair ;
for already, with rare sagacity, he detected a possible
rift in the imposing fabric of the British Empire. He
foresaw and foretold, from the very first moment, the
consequences which would infallibly result from the
cession of Canada. So long as the English colonists had
France for their neighbour, — harassing them with raids,
inciting the Indians to ravage their villages, and building
forts and blockhouses up to the very edge of their frontier,
and sometimes even within it, — they could not afford to
dispense with the aid and protection of the mother-
country. But the French power had been up-rooted
from America. England, by her own act, had destroyed
the only check which kept her Transatlantic subjects in
awe ; and if ever, from that time forward, she ill-treated
or offended them, they would reply by throwing off their
dependence. So Vergennes had specifically prophesied ;
and, at the very moment when his prescience was justi-
^ " Malgre son ige," (so Doniol says of Maurepas,) " il restait I'homme
par qui avait ete operee autrefois la reconstitution de la Marine en vue de
tenir tete a la Grande Bretagne, et de faire reprendre, un jour ou I'autre,
a France sa part de I'empire des mers." The passage which follows this
sentence contains a most interesting comparison between the actual, and
the legendary, Maurepas.
"The ablest man I knew," wrote Horace Walpole, "was the old
Comte de Maurepas. . . . Madame de Pompadour diverted a large sum
that Maurepas had destined to re-establish their Marine. Knowing his
enmity to this country, I told him, (and the compliment was true,) that it
was fortunate for England that he had been so long divested of power."
Walpole's Memoirs of the Reign of George the Third \ Volume II.,
Chapter 2.
414 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
fied by the event, he found himself Foreign Minister
of France, with the secret strings of diplomacy in
his grasp ; enjoying the unlimited confidence of his
aged chief ; and controlled by no one except a youthful
king who was too obtuse to detect all that his Ministers
were engaged in doing, and far too shy to rebuke them
roundly for anything rash or unprincipled which they
had actually done. Carlyle describes Vergennes as
sitting at his desk " in dull matter of fact, like a
dull punctual clerk ; " but it is well for the tranquillity
of Europe that such clerks do not often find their way
to the top of the French Foreign Office. He was, in
truth, a statesman with will and energy, who was
always possessed by two absorbing ideas, the con-
current force of which impelled him towards his goal
through a wilderness of obstacles, and over a mountain
of almost superhuman labour. He could not feel at
peace with himself until his country had recovered her
rank among the nations of the world ; and his policy
was habitually inspired by intense and implacable
hostility to England.
The French Ministers were strongly disposed to
assist and protect the American insurgents ; but they
had a mortal terror of the British navy. They could
not forget their experience of 1755, when they were
taught, with no desire for a repetition of the lesson,
that the mistress of the seas had a rough, and an
over-prompt, way of dealing with an intruder on her
own element. In the summer of that year, before
ever war had been declared between the two nations,
Boscawen attacked and scattered a French squadron
of battle-ships, and Hawke brought into British ports
three hundred French trading vessels, and lodged six
thousand French sailors in British prisons.^ And now,
in the spring of 1776, the advisers of Louis the
Sixteenth were haunted by an apprehension that,
if France showed her hand prematurely, England,
1 Mahan's Influence of Sea Power', Chapter 8.
VERGENNES 415
and the English colonies, would hasten to make up
their family quarrel, and would celebrate their recon-
ciliation by joining together in an attack upon the
French possessions in the West Indies. King Louis
was solemnly and repeatedly warned by his diplomatic
agents in London that Lord Chatham, the idol of his
compatriots on both sides of the Atlantic, would mediate
between the Crown and Congress, and would be re-
called to power as Prime Minister. He would have
at his disposal, — equipped for a campaign, inured to
battle, and assembled at a convenient spot for embarka-
tion, — the Boston garrison of ten thousand British
regulars, and a host of New England minute-men and
Virginian sharp-shooters ; while sixty vessels of the
Royal Navy, and a swarm of colonial privateers, were
afloat on American waters, ready and eager to bombard
French ports, and to make prizes of French merchant-
men. Long before any reinforcements could arrive
from Brest or Rochefort, the famous English war
minister would sweep the French from Saint Domingo,
and Martinique, and Guadeloupe, and all the rest of the
Greater and Lesser Antilles, just as, half a generation
previously, he had swept them out of Canada.^
That prospect, formidable as it looked, did not
deter Vergennes from the purpose upon which his mind
was set ; but he thought it prudent, for the time being,
to mask his operations by an artful system of under-
hand manoeuvres. Disguising a flagrant breach of
international good faith under the specious name of
patriotic caution, he drew up a paper of Considerations
on the Policy which should be pursued by the Govern-
ments of France and Spain ; and, on the twelfth of
March 1776, he communicated the document to King
Louis, and to his own four principal colleagues in the
Cabinet. It was essential, (he wrote,) to persuade
George the Third that the intentions of the two
Bourbon Powers towards England were not only pacific,
^ Doniol ; Volume I., Page 69, and elsewhere.
41 6 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
but positively friendly, in order that the English
ministry might be emboldened to entangle themselves,
too deep for retreat, in a fierce, a dubious, and a
most exhausting war against their own colonists. The
courage of those colonists, on the other hand, would
have to be " sustained by secret favours " from France.
They should be supplied furtively, but generously, with
arms and money, and informed that, while it was below
the dignity of the French King to treat openly with
insurgents, His Majesty was disposed to recognise them
as allies if they ventured upon the decisive step of re-
nouncing their allegiance to the English Crown, and
declaring themselves an independent nation. ^
The Chief of the Cabinet, the Minister of War, and
the Minister of the Marine warmly approved the
objects that Vergennes had in view, and expressed no
repugnance to the means by which he purposed to
attain them. But every paragraph in the Foreign
Secretary's memorandum was intensely distasteful to
the King. Louis the Sixteenth had little inclination
to pose as the tutelary genius of a rebellion. ** His
intuitions, dim as they were," forewarned him that
revolutionary principles were among the most portable
of all foreign products, and that no ocean was broad
enough to preserve European monarchies from being
infected by the contagion of American republicanism.^
Nor could he fail to remember how, a very short while
back, and by his own express command, the Comte
de Vergennes had emphatically re-assured Viscount
Stormont, the English Ambassador in France, as to
the intentions and the sympathies of the French
Court.^ The Prime Minister himself, at a subsequent
1 Doniol ; Volume I., Pages 272-286.
2 Bancroft's i¥if>/t?r7 of the United States of America \ Epoch Fourth,
Chapter 2.
^ Lord Stormont to Lord Rochford ; Fontainebleau, October 31, 1775.
Vergennes, " spontaneously, and with the air and manner of a man who
utters his honest opinion," informed Lord Stormont that the American
rebellion was regarded at Versailles as a calamity ; and that, far from
desiring to increase the embarrassments of the British Government, the
VERGENNES 417
interview with Lord Stormont, spoke still more unequi-
vocally to the same effect. '' I and my colleagues,"
said Maurepas, "• are not the men to take advantage
of a neighbour's difficulties, and to fish in troubled
waters. You may accept it for certain that we are
not giving, and will never give, any single article of
warlike stores for the use of the rebel army." ^ Louis
the Sixteenth, who was acquainted with all that had
passed between his own confidential servants and King
George's diplomatic representative, recoiled, Hke a true
gentleman, from the notion of striking a foul blow
against a brother monarch with whom he professed
to be on terms of cordial amity. He was governed,
moreover, by a conviction of duty, as well as by a
sense of honour. Although of languid will, and inert
habits, he none the less was instinctively public-
spirited ; and by the sincerity of his religious belief,
and the rectitude of his personal conduct, he merited
his conventional appellation of The Most Christian
King. Conscience forbade him to enter upon a course
of treachery which could not fail to involve his country
in a hazardous and protracted war. Actuated by an
unfeigned solicitude for the people committed to his
charge, he shrank from wantonly inaugurating, after an
interval of only twelve years, another devil's carnival
of bloodshed and rapine, of national peril, and of private
bereavement, impoverishment, and ruin.
Louis the Sixteenth had good reason to trust his
unfavourable judgment of the proposals submitted
to him by Vergennes ; for his own scruples were
shared by as wise and virtuous a minister as ever took
part in the councils of any State, whether kingdom
or republic, in the modern or the ancient world.
Michelet, — the most audacious of historians, who
has handled only too freely topics which he would
King of France and his Ministers contemplated those embarrassments
with extreme regret.
1 Doniol ; Volume I., Pages 198-203.
VOL. IV. 21
4l8 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
have done much better to leave alone, — relates how,
in the darkness of the night, an inner voice addressed
to him the warning words : " What man of this gen-
eration is worthy to speak of Turgot ? " ^ Every author,
and not Michelet only, may well feel that it is
superfluous, and almost impertinent, to praise a
statesman the bare mention of whose name is in itself
a sufficient panegyric. By March 1776, Turgot had for
nineteen months been Comptroller of Finances, and, (in
far other than the official sense of the term,) a keeper
of the King's conscience. He had still five years of
life before him ; and within that time, working at
the rate at which he hitherto had worked, he might
have brought to completion the vast, but practicable,
scheme of public economy, extinction of privilege, un-
fettered commerce, local self-government, and national
education by which he confidently hoped to re-organise
the body politic, and to renovate society. If Turgot
had not been robbed of his royal master's confidence
by the intrigues of those courtiers and nobles whom he
was endeavouring to save in spite of themselves, his
country would have been guided, along quieter paths,
to much happier destinies than those which awaited
her under Robespierre, and Barras, and Napoleon Bona-
parte. France might have escaped untold horrors ;
and Europe might have been spared an almost inter-
minable series of useless and devastating wars.
Turgot had been a warm, and a very early, friend
to the independence of America ; which he welcomed
in the interests of mankind, and not least for the sake
of England.^ But his first duty was to his own coun-
try ; and he combated the proposal of a warlike policy
with an earnestness inspired by his profound conviction
that the whole future of France was involved in the
decision which her rulers were now called upon to take.
His reply to Vergennes cost him some weeks of thought
1 Histoire de France ; Volume XIX., Chapter 13.
2 Turgot to Doctor Josiah Tucker, the Dean of Gloucester ; Paris,
September 12, 1770.
TURCOT 419
and labour. It was a masterly production ; a volumi-
nous treatise, three quarters of a century in advance of
his age, on the philosophy of colonial administration,
and at the same time a powerful and persuasive official
minute upon the question of the hour. England, (so
the argument ran,) would in all likelihood lose her colo-
nies ; or, if she succeeded in reconquering them, she
would be condemned thenceforward to hold them in
subjection at an expense of money, and military re-
sources, which would bind her over, under the most
stringent penalties, to keep the peace with her Euro-
pean neighbours and rivals, and more especially with
France.^ Whatever result might ensue, France would
be the gainer ; and to choose such a moment for a wan-
ton and gratuitous attack upon England was an im-
measurable folly, and a signal crime. The English
ministry had done nothing whatever to invite or pro-
voke a war ; and every plan of aggression on the part
of France was forbidden by moral reasons, and by con-
siderations of national self-interest more imperious still.
The King, (said the Comptroller-General,) was ac-
quainted with the condition of his finances, and knew,
better than anyone, what sacrifices and efforts were re-
quired to stave off bankruptcy even in time of peace.
The first cannon-shot fired against a foreign enemy
would scatter to the winds all His Majesty's gracious
designs for the better government of France, and for
the ameHoration in the hard lot of her unhappy peasan-
try. ** An English war," (such was Turgot's conclu-
sion,) " should be shunned as the greatest of all misfor-
tunes ; since it would render impossible, perhaps for
ever, a reform absolutely necessary to the prosperity of
the State and the solace of the people." ^
Turgot did well to spare no pains over the composi-
^ " Que nous faisait, des lors, que I'Angleterre soumtt ou non ses
colonies insurgentes ? Soumises, elles I'occuperaient assez par leur desir
de devcnir libres, pour que nous n'ayons plus k craindre. Affranchies,
tout le systeme commercial se trouvait change."
'^ Doniol ; Volume I., Pages 280-283. The Life and Writings of
Turgoty edited by W. Walter Stephens ; pages 295-296, and 321-324.
3£ 2
420 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
tion of this historical document, for it was the last im-
portant State-paper which he wrote from his official
chair. He had made a host of enemies by his bold and
uncompromising action in almost every department of
public affairs; and yet he was feared and hated, less
for what he had done already, than for what he might
do next. It was bad enough that the tiller of the soil
should be released from the obligation of maintaining
roads and highways by his unpaid labour; that the
town artisan, emancipated from the shackles of trade
monopoly, should be at liberty to carry his skill and
industry into the open market ; that corn grown in one
province should be sold, and exported, with the effect
of lowering the price of bread in another ; and that
tribute should no longer be exacted from government
contractors, and Farmers General, by great people
about the Court. All this was bad enough, but there
was worse behind ; for it was a matter of notoriety that
" le sieur Turgot," with the innate vulgarity of his birth
and breeding, was not alive to the merits of a fiscal sys-
tem under which the poor and the industrious were bled
to the quick, while the rich and the idle " contributed a
mere fraction of their substance to the revenue of the
State, and then divided among themselves the larger
part of its expenditure." Unless a change came over
the spirit of the Treasury, the tax-gatherer would soon
be knocking, with equal hand, at the castle and the
cottage; and salaries and pensions would have to be
earned by hard dull work in the service of the nation,
instead of being distributed among the sons and daugh-
ters of leisure, as the reward of sycophancy and im-
portunity.
The case was urgent ; and the manipulators of politics
had recourse to the machinery by which Ministerial re-
arrangements had been effected during the late reign,
with one very important modification. Female influence
was again called into play ; but it was the influence of
the wife, and not of the mistress. There was an out-
burst of sinister activity in the closely-banded circle of
TURCOT 421
high-born men and women by whom Marie Antoinette
was encompassed, and plundered, and prompted. Tur-
got was not blind to the perils of his situation. When
he first went to the Treasury he had addressed his royal
master in plain and honest words. " I shall have," he
said, '' to struggle even against the goodness and gen-
erosity of Your Majesty, and of the persons who are
most dear to you." He kept his promise; and the
Queen, before very long, became his personal adver-
sary. Her only idea with regard to public money was
to get as much as possible of it to spend. However
often her lap was filled with gold, and her toilet-case
with jewels, she still had unpaid bills which she dared
not show to her husband because she knew that her
husband dared not show them to his Comptroller Gen-
eral.^ There was one grudge rankling in her memory
which surpassed all others. In an evil hour for herself,
and for the object of her misplaced bounty, she had
done her utmost, without success, to procure the enor-
mous salary of fifty thousand crowns a year for her
favourite, the Princesse de Lamballe ; the same ill-fated
lady who, in September 1792, heard economic reformers,
of a very much fiercer type than Turgot, thundering at
the door of her prison. The Austrian ambassador at
Versailles, the Comte de Mercy, had been entrusted
with the duty of keeping his Empress punctually and
faithfully informed as to her daughter's conduct; and
the young Queen was exhorted, both by her mother
and brother, to abstain from interference in French
politics. But her monitors were far away, and her
tempters near at hand. Seldom indeed, in all the his-
tory of the past, was greater mischief wrought by
woman than when Marie Antoinette placed herself at
the service of that base and selfish conspiracy for the
murder of a noble career, and the destruction of a na-
tion's hopes.2
^ Monsieur de Mercy to the Empress of Austria ; July 19, 1776.
* Marie Antoinette confessed to her mother that she was not ill
pleased by the changes in the ministry, although she herself had not
422 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
The threatened minister became conscious that the
ground was undermined beneath his feet. He stood
deserted and alone in the face of danger. Even Presi-
dent Malesherbes, the only colleague with whom he was
on terms of sympathy and confidence, resigned office un-
expectedly, and, (as regards Turgot,) somewhat shabbily
and disloyally. Sixteen years afterwards Malesherbes,
with a prospect of the guillotine as his advocate's fee,
valiantly defended his fallen sovereign at the bar of
the Convention ; a conspicuous example that there have
been those who find it less terrible to confront death
than to defy social unpopularity. Malesherbes retired
on the twelfth of May 1776; and, on the same evening,
Turgot received a message to the purport that he was
no longer Comptroller General. There was joy in the
corridors of Versailles ; and dowagers, who thought
that they wrote Hke Madame de Sevigne, filled their
letters with epigrams upon the fallen minister. But
the millions, who toiled and suffered, knew that they
had lost their best friend, and their only protector;
and all sincere well-wishers to France were over-
whelmed by grief, consternation, and a sentiment akin
to despair. Condorcet sent Voltaire a melancholy and
touching letter, ending with the words: "Adieu! We
have had a beautiful dream." '' Ever since Turgot is
out of place," (Voltaire himself wrote,) " I see only
death before me. I cannot conceive how he could
be dismissed. A thunderbolt has fallen on my head
and on my heart." The announcement of the great
Minister's removal from power was everywhere recog-
nised as the death-knell of European peace. ** Such
men as Turgot," (said Horace Walpole,) **who are the
friends of human kind, could not think of war, however
fair the opportunity we offered to them. Poor France
and poor England ! " After the deed was done. King
Louis was overcome with shame, and very sad and
meddled in the matter. De Mercy told Maria Theresa a very different
story. It was, (he wrote,) the Queen's full intention to have the Comp-
troller General turned out from office, and sent straight to the Bastille.
TURCOT 423
anxious. " Except myself and Turgot," (so he had
been used to say,) '* there is no one who really loves
the people." Sensible of his own weakness, he foresaw
that he would soon be coerced into undoing all the
good work which he and his departed servant had
accomplished together. And, now that he stood alone
against the opinion of his united Cabinet, he felt himself
powerless to avert the projected war with England which
shocked his conscience, and which in its consequences
proved fatal to his reign.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
BEAUMARCHAIS. FREDERIC OF PRUSSIA. FRANKLIN IN
PARIS. THE FRENCH TREATIES
When Turgot fell from power, Vergennes became un-
disputed master of the international situation ; and he
had at his disposal, for carrying out his purposes, an
instrument as sharp as ever political craftsman handled.
He was in intimate and secret relations with a man
who may fairly be described as having led the typical
French career of the eighteenth century. Pierre Au-
gustin Caron, born in the Rue Saint-Denis at Paris in
the year 1732, was the son of an ex-Calvinist watch-
maker who enjoyed the patronage of the Court at
Versailles. The younger Caron might often be seen at
the Palace on his father's errands. He was greatly
noticed for his handsome face and manly bearing, his
assured air and dominant manners, and the instinctive
impression which he produced on all who met him
that, against whatever difficulties and by whatever
methods, he intended to carry the world before him.
His merits were not lost on the great ladies of the
Court ; but he had the good sense to try his wings in a
low flight, and, by the age of three-and-twenty, he was
on the best of terms with the wife of one of the sixteen
Clerks of Office of the King's Household, who, as a
matter of fact, and in plain words, were the waiters at
the royal dinner-table. The husband, already advanced
in years, made over his employment to his young friend,
and died a few months afterwards. Caron had now a
salary of two thousand francs, and enjoyed the privilege
of wearing a sword when he brought in the dishes.
He married the widow ; and from that time forward he
signed himself Caron de Beaumarchais, after a small
424
BEA UMAR CHAIS 42 5
feudal estate which was said to be in the possession of
his wife's family. The exact locality of that estate has
never been ascertained ; but the name was soon famous
throughout Europe.
Beaumarchais climbed fast when once his foot was on
the ladder. He had the inestimable gift of persuading
others to serve him without requiring in return any-
thing except his gratitude. His first wife died within
the year, and in due time he married another rich and
handsome widow. He had not attained the social rank
which quaUfied for admission among the friends, and
personal clients, of Madame de Pompadour ; but he
contrived to make acquaintance with the gentleman
who had been her husband, and he struck up a very
close alliance with her confidential man of business.
This was Monsieur Du Verney, the eminent capitaHst
who put Voltaire in the way of obtaining that army-
contract which made him the Croesus of literature, and
who was an equally generous patron to Beaumarchais.
Du Verney endowed the young fellow with a large sum
of money ; he indoctrinated him in the secrets of Court
finance ; and he provided him with funds whenever a
lucrative office was for sale which was beyond the
compass of his private resources. Beaumarchais was
thus enabled to become Secretary to the King, Lieu-
tenant-General of the Parks and Chases, and Captain
of the Warren of the Louvre. He laid down half a mil-
lion francs, at a single payment, in order to buy a place
among the Grand Masters of the Lakes and Forests ;
but on this occasion he had aimed too high, and the
other members of the Board refused to be associated
with the son of a watchmaker. Beaumarchais declined
to intrude where he was not welcome, and avenged
himself on his fastidious opponents by a delicious
specimen of his sarcastic humour.^ He was an admi-
^ Beaumarchais, the most perfect of sons and brothers, never wrote
better than when he was rebuking those who jeered at his family, or
attacked his private hfe. "I own," he said on one occasion, "that
nothing can wash away the reproach of having been the son of a watch-
maker. I can only reply that 1 never saw the man with whom 1 would
426 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
rable writer. His prose was always clear and pointed,
sometimes remarkably forcible, and often exquisitely
graceful ; and his verse, which flowed profusely, satis-
fied the taste of the day. His celebrity owes a very
large debt to the genius of others ; for his name has
been perpetuated by Rossini and Mozart in the two
most popular operas, of their own class, that ever were
exhibited on the stage. Beaumarchais himself was no
mean musician. He sang with taste ; and played to
perfection on the flute, and on the harp, which then
was a novelty in Paris. He was a principal performer
in the weekly concert given at Versailles in the apart-
ment of those four daughters of Louis the Fifteenth
who bore the august title of Mesdames de France.
Beaumarchais breathed freely and easily in the corrupt
element by which he was surrounded; but he had in
him the making of a greater man if he had lived in
greater times. He was something very different from
a supple courtier. The Dauphin, who was an abler
prince than his unfortunate son, and far more virtuous
than his father, said that Beaumarchais was the only
person, in and about Versailles, from whom he could
learn the truth ; and the two famous comedies, the
Barber of Seville and the Marriage of Figaro, which
were produced at a time when their author was still
laboriously mounting the path of advancement, abounded
in sharp strokes against the follies of those great folks
who had the power to make, or unmake, his fortunes.
Beaumarchais, the most brilliant of upstarts, never
ceased to be a mark for envy, and for what would
exchange fathers ; and I know too well the value of that time which, in
the exercise of our trade, he taught me to measure, to waste any of it in
taking notice of such despicable trivialities."
An adversary of Beaumarchais endeavoured to sap his credit with the
Comte de Vergennes by accusing him of ** keeping girls." Beaumarchais
favoured his calumniator with a letter, of which he sent a copy to the
Foreign Secretary. " Monsieur," (he wrote,) *' the girls whom I have
kept for the last twenty years are five in number ; my four sisters and my
niece. Two of them, to my great sorrow, have lately died ; but I likewise
support that unhappy father who is unfortunate enough to have given to
the world so shameless a libertine as myself."
BEAUMARCHAIS 427
willingly have been contempt ; but no one then lived
with whom it was less safe to trifle. The wounds in-
flicted by his pen took long to heal; and he possessed
the courage of the swordsman as well as of the satirist.
He had killed his man in a terrible duel ; and, while his
reply to an insolent letter was invariably couched in
phrases of subtle and refined wit that set all the world
laughing, he was pretty sure to conclude with a very
significant hint that he was ready to make good his
words by push of steel. He was admired and dreaded as
the most dexterous and persistent of intellectual gladia-
tors. Never was there such an example made of any
offender as Beaumarchais made of Monsieur Goezman,
the Judge who gave a decision unfavourable to his claims,
after the Judge's wife had accepted from him a purse of
gold. The guilty pair were ruined ; and the disap-
pointed suitor emerged from his single-handed conflict
against the paramount, and unscrupulously exerted,
authority of the Parliament of Paris with the reputation
of having approved himself the most irrepressible con-
troversialist in France.-^
Beaumarchais was now regarded in the highest
quarters as too clever to be wasted, and much too
formidable to be left unemployed. Shortly before the
death of Louis the Fifteenth he was sent to England,
under a feigned name, as a private agent of the French
Cabinet. Information had arrived from London that,
somewhere in the very lowest and dingiest regions of
literature, preparations were on foot for issuing a book
which purported to be the secret memoirs of Madame
du Barry. Beaumarchais settled the business at a cost
in money which greatly exceeded the value of that
lady's reputation. He secured and destroyed the
manuscript ; and three thousand copies of the work
^ Everything known about Beaumarchais has been told, and well told,
in the admirable work entitled Beaumarchais^ et Son 7'emps, par Louis
de Lomenie, de V Academic Fran^aise ; Paris, 1855. De Lomenie ends
his last volume with a very just, and interesting, disquisition on the
political eminence, which Beaumarchais might have reached if he had
been born in the days of free and constitutional government.
428 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
were burned in a lime-kiln under his personal super-
vision. He next bought up, for a still larger price, a
mischievous libel upon Marie Antoinette ; and his
successful conduct of these two negotiations led to his
being entrusted with a still more singular commission.
He was directed to seek out the Chevalier d'Eon, who
then resided in England, and order him in the name of
King Louis to dress himself in petticoats, and make a
public declaration that he was a woman, which he most
certainly was not. The work in which Beaumarchais
was engaged during his visit to our island cannot be
described as dignified or important ; but he found time
to spare for matters more worthy of his attention, and
not less suited to his very peculiar abilities. He had
a lively interest in British politics, which at that time
were almost exclusively concerned with the question of
America. He rubbed shoulders with men of all parties,
and he heard both sides. Lord Rochford, the most
approachable among Secretaries of State, made him the
companion of his all too numerous lighter hours ; and
he was a sworn brother to John Wilkes, who resembled
Beaumarchais as nearly as an Englishman can resemble
a Frenchman, in the defects and qualities of his charac-
ter, and not less in the most remarkable circumstance of
his past career. There was not much to choose, whether
for praise or blame, between the champion of the Goez-
man law-suit,, and the hero of the Middlesex election.
As soon as the rebellion broke out, Beaumarchais fore-
saw that the colonists would win ; and he entertained a
deep and passionate belief that, if France helped them
in their hour of need, she would obtain her share in the
advantages of their victory. He threw himself into the
movement with an energy so masterful that he imposed
his views upon the leading members of a Cabinet, which
he served in a humble, and even an ignominious, capacity.
There is no more instructive instance of the stupendous
results which may be accomplished by native force of
will, and acute perception of the right moment for vigor-
ous action, than the story of the adventurer who, with no
BE A UM ARCH A IS 429
recognised official position, and three aliases to his name,
never hesitated or rested until he had set France and
England by the ears.
The potent influence exercised by Beaumarchais over
the decisions of the French Government is a strange
phenomenon, but not altogether inexplicable to those
who have been behind the scenes in politics. A private
individual, with a message of his own to deliver, finds
it very difficult to get a hearing in official quarters. But,
if once he has been accepted as an adviser, he has every
chance of making his opinion felt ; for he speaks with a
freedom of conviction, and novelty of phrase, refreshing
to overworked statesmen depressed and dulled by the
sense of responsibility, who are tired of discussing an
affair of State among themselves, and who know each
other's arguments by heart. Beaumarchais twice
addressed the Royal Council at Versailles in a strain of
fiery and picturesque eloquence which no Cabinet Min-
ister, that ever lived, would venture to inflict upon his
own colleagues. His line of reasoning was artfully
adapted to the pacific temperament of Louis the Six-
teenth, and to his unambitious aspirations for the wel-
fare and tranquillity of his people. The American
rebeUion, (so Beaumarchais wrote,) must terminate, if
left to itself, in a complete victory for England, or for
the revolted colonies ; and in either of those contingencies
France would inevitably, and almost immediately, find
herself plunged into a sanguinary, and frightfully ex-
pensive, war. The only possible means of averting
such a catastrophe was to maintain an equilibrium be-
tween the two contending parties by surreptitiously help-
ing the insurgents, during the first stage of the conflict,
with arms and ammunition. That transaction should be
so conducted as not to compromise the French Govern-
ment ; and, if His Majesty required the services of a
devoted agent, Beaumarchais himself was prepared to
accept the office, and to compensate for lack of ability
by zeal, fidelity, and discretion. " Believe me, Sire,"
(he said,) '* when I assure you that the mere preparations
430 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
for a first campaign would be more onerous to your
Treasury than the whole amount of those modest suc-
cours for which Congress now petitions ; and that the
paltry and melancholy saving of a couple of million francs
at the present moment will cost you three hundred
millions before two years are over." ^ In his private cor-
respondence with the ministers, Beaumarchais was much
less respectful to his Sovereign ; and he did not scruple
to say plainly that, in small things and in great, Louis
the Sixteenth never had, and never would have, a mind
of his own. He recalled to Maurepas how that amiable
and docile Prince had sworn that he would not allow
himself to be inoculated ; and how, a week after the
oath was taken, he had the germ of the small-pox in
his arm. " Everyone," said Beaumarchais, ** knows how
the case stands between the King and yourself ; and
no one will excuse you, if you cannot persuade His
Majesty to adopt those high designs on which your own
soul is intent." ^
Such letters, in any previous reign, might have
lodged the writer in the Bastille, and consigned the
minister to disgrace and exile ; but Maurepas and
Vergennes stood in no awe whatever of Louis the Six-
teenth, and they were impressed and fascinated by
Beaumarchais. He had proposed himself as an inter-
mediary between Philadelphia and Versailles ; and he
was promptly taken at his word. In June 1776 the
Foreign Secretary handed him an order on the French
Treasury for a million francs ; and, two months after-
wards, another million was transmitted to him by the
Court of Madrid. From Spain he also borrowed a title
for the fictitious house of business under cover of
which he traded ; and purchases were made, and ships
chartered, on behalf, not of Caron de Beaumarchais,
^ Memoire remis au Roi cachete^ par M. de Sariines le 21 SepUmbre^
1775. Memoire remis h M. le Comte de Vergennes, cachet volant, le
29 Fevrier, 1776.
2 Memoire de Beaumarchais, remis au Comte de Maurepas le 30 MarSx
1777.
BE A UMARCHAIS 43 1
but of Roderigo Hortalez and Company. It was a
favoured firm, whose buyers found means to procure
surplus military stores in great quantity, and excellent
condition, from the public arsenals of France ; together
with a large number of cannons and mortars cast in
the royal gun-factories, on which, by a convenient
oversight, the authorities had omitted to stamp the
royal arms.^ The custom-house people, and the officers
of the port, at Havre and Nantes had at first been
troublesome and inquisitive; but in January 1777,
after the arrival of a government courier from Paris,
they stopped asking questions about any vessels, bound
for an unknown destination, which had been taking sus-
picious cargoes on board. Half a score of merchant-
men, ostensibly belonging to Hortalez and Company,
were presently on their way to America ; and, in the
course of the next few weeks, three ship-loads of muskets
and gunpowder, together with clothing and footgear for
five-and-twenty thousand soldiers, were landed at Ports-
mouth in New Hampshire ''amidst acclamations, and
clapping of hands, from an immense multitude of spec-
tators." Only a very short time had elapsed since the
Comte de Vergennes, in the name of his monarch, had
congratulated the English ambassador on the capture
of Rhode Island by the English navy ; and the Foreign
Secretary had thought fit to add, on his own account,
that he had heard the good news with an emotion of
''true sensibility."^ They httle knew our country
who imagined that she could be tricked and flouted
with impunity. It was a matter of absolute certainty
that now, as at other periods of her history, she would
encounter secret treachery by open resort to arms.
That million of francs, by the judicious and timely
disbursement of which the French Ministry had hoped
1 This circumstance is stated in a conversation between the Duke
of Grafton and Lord Weymouth, reported in the ninth chapter of the
Autobiography and Political Correspondence of the Duke of Grafton,
Edited by Sir William Anson.
2 Doniol ; Tome II., Chapitre 6.
432 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
to inflict a mortal injury on the British power with small
cost and danger to themselves, had grown, before the
affair was finally settled, into a war expenditure of
something very near a milliard and a quarter ; and the
royal government of France, which had stooped to such
unroyal practices, was submerged in an ocean of bank-
ruptcy where it was destined miserably to perish.
That was what came of an attempt to fight England
on the cheap.^
The ablest monarch on the Continent of Europe was
an unsparing critic of the British policy, and a personal
enemy of the British sovereign ; but he was wise enough,
and old enough, to regulate his animosity by a prudent
and rather selfish caution. Frederic of Prussia had
already reached his grand climacteric. He was pre-
maturely aged in looks and in health ; a broken man,
if the body could have subdued the soul. But there
was tempered steel within that frayed and battered
sheath ; and his spirit was unquenched, his will firm,
and his wit keen and biting. In October 1775 he had
been prostrated by the most severe illness from which
he ever rose alive. The British ambassador at Berlin
reported him to his Court as dying; and the French
accounts exaggerated his physical weakness, (to use
Frederic's own martial metaphor,) as much as they
always were accustomed to exaggerate the English
losses in a pitched battle. He was very ill ; but he
never wasted an opportunity ; and, during the hours
when the doctors would not allow him to work, he lay
quiet, and thought the American question out.^ The
illustrious invalid, on his sick-bed, understood George
the Third's affairs much better than they were under-
stood by George the Third himself when in full posses-
^ It was calculated that, between the years 1778 and 1783, the war
with England cost the French Treasury forty-eight million pounds sterling.
It was the main cause of those financial difficulties which led immediately
up to the Revolution of 1789.
2 Le roi Frederic au Comte de Maltzan, Octobre 1775.
FREDERIC OF PRUSSIA 433
sion of his health ; and some of the reflections which
presented themselves to Frederic's mind were eminently
just, and far from ill-natured or ignoble. He had
known and admired England at a period when she was
true to her better self, and while she still obeyed the
guidance of her best man. She had been the only ally
who, in the old hero's immense and varied experience,
had ever given him more help than trouble ; and Lord
Chatham was the one human being on earth whom, in
his heart, he acknowledged as his peer. Frederic would
gladly have seen our nation intelligently and strongly
governed; taking an active part in European politics;
and remaining faithful, at home and abroad, to those
principles of liberty which, (however little he might
desire to see them introduced into his own kingdom,)
he regarded as the main source of England's strength,
and as the common heritage of her sons in every
quarter of the globe. He thought it ''very hard,"
(such were his exact words,) that Parliament should
have proclaimed the colonists as rebels for defending
their privileges against the encroachments of the central
government. '* Every Englishman," he said, ** who is a
friend to his own country, must deplore the turn that
affairs are taking, and the odious perspective of discord
and calamity which has opened in the history of his
race."
That sentiment was finely expressed, and honourable
to Frederic's head and heart ; but his hostility to the
Court of St. James's was inflamed by prejudices and
resentments less worthy of so great a ruler. In his
persona' dislikes he was only too little of a hypocrite ;
and his opinion of contemporary monarchs, and their
favourites of both sexes, had always been the one and
only State secret which he was incapable of keeping
unrevealed. Everything in Prussia was strictly governed
except his own tongue and pen ; and he would have
avoided many serious difficulties if to the military
genius of a Gustavus Adolphus, and the administrative
faculty of a Peter the Great, he had added the charac-
VOL. IV. 2F
434 ^^^ AMERICAN REVOLUTION
teristic attribute of William the Silent. There were
two men, and one woman, by whom Frederic esteemed
himself to have been deeply injured, and whom he
never even pretended to forgive. The woman, who
was Madame de Pompadour, had by this time died ; but
the other objects of his wrath were still within the reach
of his ill offices, and the range of his satire. It had
been a bad moment for the King of Prussia when, at
the crisis of the Seven Years' War, the military and
financial assistance extended to him by George the
Second, and William Pitt, was unexpectedly withdrawn
by George the Second's successor, and his new Scotch
Prime Minister. Half a generation had elapsed since
that distressing event occurred ; but Frederic even yet
could never mention George the Third and Lord Bute
with patience, and very seldom with decency. A
scalded cat, (he would say,) dreaded even the cold
water ; and he, for his part, was incapable of being
friends with a prince who had treated him with such
signal duplicity. On one occasion, indeed, he went so
far as to tell his ambassador in London that he would
as soon be an ally of King George as a good Christian
would be on terms with the Devil ; and he was fond of
declaring that Lord Bute would certainly be hanged
for throwing away the American colonies, and that he
himself would be only too delighted to provide the
rope.^
Although Frederic the Great seldom denied himself
the indulgence of giving free play to his malicious
humour, he had not become the most famous, and the
most successful, of European potentates by basing his
foreign policy on his private antipathies and predilec-
tions. He hated King George, and he despised King
George's ministers ; but, during every successive phase
of the American dispute, his course was exclusively
determined by the conception which he had formed of
Prussian interests, and by no other consideration of
^ Le roi Frederic au Comte de Maltzan, 3 Janvier 1774; 9 Janvier
1775; 10 Octobre 1776; 7 Avril 1777.
FREDERIC OF PRUSSIA 435
any sort or kind whatsoever. He had long ago been
satiated with campaigns and battles. In his ambitious
youth, before he had been a twelvemonth on the throne,
he had cut out for himself a task which lasted him his
life-time ; and now, at the age of sixty-three, he had
no mind to re-commence his Herculean toils, and
expose his people, whom he sincerely loved, to the
sacrifices of war and the miseries of invasion. But for
some while past he had foreseen, with stern reluctance,
the approach of a political contingency which would
force him once again to draw the sword. The Elector
of Bavaria, who was in precarious health, might die
at any moment, leaving behind him no issue, and a
disputed succession. His Duchy was claimed by the
Emperor of Germany, on the most flimsy and anti-
quated of pretexts ; and Joseph the Second made no
secret of his intention to march across the Inn river,
and take forcible possession of Munich, and the adja-
cent district, as soon as the breath was out of the
Elector's body. So great an increase of territory would
render the House of Austria nothing less than despotic
within the boundaries of the Empire ; and Frederic was
firmly resolved to stand forward in the character of the
champion of German independence.
As Generalissimo of the levies of the Confederacy,
with his own splendid army to set them an example of
valour and discipline, the King of Prussia was a match
for any force which Austria herself could place in the
field ; but it would be a far more serious business if the
Emperor Joseph could persuade Marie Antoinette to
cajole her husband into embarking upon an offensive, and
defensive, alliance with the Court of Vienna. The young
Queen of France was deeply attached to her brother,
and followed his advice on all points where she recog-
nised his title to interfere with her opinions and her
conduct. If it was a question of enriching a favourite,
or of spending too much money on her milliner and her
landscape-gardener, she was in the habit of treating his
admonitions with silent neglect; but she obeyed him
2F2
436 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
loyally and eagerly with regard to any matter that
excited the ambition, and promoted the aggrandise-
ment, of the family from which she sprang. The
instinct of the Parisians had already condemned her,
not unjustly, as a good Austrian and a very indifferent
Frenchwoman ; and the knowledge that she was devoted
to the interests of his own life-long adversary gave deep
concern, and unsleeping anxiety, to the ruler of Prussia.
That doughty soldier was nervously alive to the danger
of female influence in high places. When Turgot fell,
and when the authority of the first administrator of his
generation withered before the breath of a woman's dis-
pleasure, Frederic expressed his dread lest France should
thenceforward '* pass under a Government of the distaff;"^
and the veteran warrior had cruel reason to regard the
distaff as the most formidable of weapons. What with
two empresses, and a King's mistress, — three women,
(so he used to say,) hanging at his throat for seven
years together, — he had come so near to being throttled
that he had no inclination to repeat the horrible ex-
perience. He held it as a matter of life and death
that, for several years to come, the attention of France
should be diverted from Prussia, and that her energies
and resources should be consumed in another, and a
distant, quarter. If the Cabinets of Versailles and
London could be embroiled over the question of
America, Louis the Sixteenth would have no men or
money to spare ; and Joseph the Second would be
reduced to fight single-handed in the German war which
now was imminent. The King of France might be the
most uxorious of husbands ; but no sane or rational
French statesmen would aspire to have Frederic the
Great for an enemy on land, at a time when they were
contending at sea against the power of England.
The King of Prussia, who was no vulgar soldier,
knew that a long period of stable peace was a prime
necessity for France, exhausted, as she was, by a series
of calamitous wars ; and he had sincerely applauded
^ Le roi Frederic a M. de Goltz; Potsdam, 25 Avril 1776.
FREDERIC OF PRUSSIA 437
Turgot as a wise and merciful man, who made it his
object to relieve a wretched peasantry from the fiscal
burdens under which they groaned.^ But Frederic
was not in a position to afford himself the luxury
of yielding to an impulse of philanthropy. During
five-and-thirty years of peril and difficulty he had
lived in single-minded obedience to the law of self-
preservation ; and, when he arrived at the conclusion
that a quarrel between France and England would
conduce to the security of his own kingdom, he
put aside all thoughts of compassion for the French
tax-payer. From the beginning of 1778 onwards he
employed his immense cleverness, and his unequalled
authority, to impress upon Louis the Sixteenth's
ministers a conviction that the revolt of the American
colonies was an opportunity for reducing the power
of Great Britain which had never occurred before,
and could not be expected to present itself again
in the course of three generations.^ That was the
text upon which his ambassador at Versailles was
ceaselessly exhorted to ring the changes. The poor
man could never preach often enough, or loud enough,
to satisfy his exacting master. Every week, — and, as
the plot thickened, every third day, — brought from
Potsdam a hotly worded reminder that King Louis,
and his advisers, were letting the favourable moment
slip. The pusillanimity of the Cabinet at Versailles,
(so Frederic declared,) would be an eternal monument
of weakness and indecision, and would prove that
French public men lacked either the nerve, or the
ambition, to revive the commanding part which their
Court had formerly played on the theatre of Europe.
When the unhappy Prussian envoy sought to excuse
himself from acting as the mouthpiece for a diplomatic
message couched in such very unflattering terms, he
^ Le roi Frederic a M. de Goltz, i Juillet 1776 ; a Monsieur d'Alembert,
Octobre 1774.
2 These words are taken from a letter written by Frederic in September
1777.
438 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
was told that his explanation was a parcel of verbiage,
not worth the travelling expenses of a courier. Instead
of pestering his Sovereign with page after page of
diffuse and senseless rubbish, — the sort of stuff that
a parrot might write if it could use a pen, — let him go
straight off to the Comte de Vergennes, and say that
the King of Prussia, after reading the last news from
America, was willing to stake his military reputation
on a prediction that, unless France speedily interfered,
the colonists would be beaten ; and that England, as
soon as the rebellion was crushed, without troubling
herself to issue a formal declaration of war, would
descend in overpowering force upon the French garri-
sons in the West Indies.^
Frederic's neighbourly interest in their national
affairs was accepted by the French as a compliment.
They set a high value on the advice voluntarily and
gratuitously offered them by so consummate a master
of war and foreign policy ; although they could not
but perceive that he consistently abstained from en-
forcing his precepts by the smallest particle of practice.
An old German Baron in Philadelphia had been accus-
tomed to amuse his young Whig friends by assuring
them, in quaint English, that the King of Prussia was
" a great man for Liberty ; " ^ but never was a sentiment
more strictly platonic than Frederic's affection for the
cause of American freedom. He maintained a passive
attitude throughout the war; he civilly, but very
plainly, forbade Congress to use his port of Embden as
a base for their naval operations ; and it was not until
the rebellion had finally triumphed, and the world was
once more at peace, that he followed the lead of Great
Britain herself, and, long after the twelfth hour had
struck, recognised the United States as an independent
^ Le roi Frederic a M. de Goltz, Berlin, 31 Decembre 1776 ; Potsdam,
16 Octobre, 30 Octobre, 13 Novembre, 17 Novembre, 27 Novembre 1777.
Doniol ; Tome L, Annexes du Chapitre 17.
^ Graydon's Memoirs.
FREDERIC OF PRUSSIA 439
nation.^ Frederic overflowed with excellent reasons
for remaining neutral. He was always ready to ex-
plain, with ostentatious humihty, how he was so poor,
and so much of a landsman, as to be of no account
whatever in a maritime war. England, (he said,) could
raise the thirty-six million crowns, which each cam-
paign cost her, more easily than he himself could
borrow a florin. When a French philosopher inquired
what part His Majesty would take in the approaching
struggle on behalf of humanity, Frederic replied that,
so far as he could discern the intentions of Mars and
Bellona, the combatants would expend their mutual
fury at sea ; and that his own fleet unfortunately
laboured under the disadvantage of containing neither
ships, pilots, admirals, nor sailors. He was frequently
urged to sanction a traffic, which could not fail to be
lucrative, between the Prussian ports and the sea-board
of the revolted colonies ; but he answered, like a sound
man of business, that the British Admiralty had eighty
cruisers afloat, and that the capture of a single one of
his own blockade-runners would sweep away the profits
of the entire venture/^
Frederic the Great eluded the advances of the
American Congress with the skill and astuteness of an
old campaigner. During the year immediately succeed-
ing the Declaration of Independence, the new Republic
across the ocean was a terror and a bugbear in every
Chancellery on the Continent of Europe. All the multi-
tudinous blunders in administration and in war, which
were made by that audacious and energetic population
of Anglo-Saxon colonists, thrown unexpectedly on their
own resources, were as nothing in comparison to the
crude and haphazard quality of their early attempts at
diplomacy. Congress, jealous of the individual, declined
^ Wharton's Diplomatic Correspondence ; Volume I., Introduction,
Chapter 6.
'^ Le roi Frederic au Comte de Maltzan, 13 Octobre 1777 * ^ ^' d'Alem-
bert, 26 Octobre 1777; au Comte de Maltzan, 3 Juin 1776; i M. dc
Schulenburg, 16 Mai 1777.
440 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
to nominate a responsible Minister for Foreign Affairs ;
and the external relations of the United States were
entrusted to a committee fluctuating in numbers and
composition, with no permanent Chairman or Secretary,
and no authority to initiate a policy of its own. Im-
portant matters were openly debated, and decided by
vote of the whole House, after the most confidential
despatches from Madrid or Versailles had been read
aloud at the table ; and, when Congress was not in
session, the decision had to wait. The statesmen at
Philadelphia conducted their diplomatic proceedings
with no lack of spirit and vigour, and with a super-
abundance of startling originality. They began by
procuring a copy of Vattel, ** which was continually
in the hands of members ; " and, if the book taught
them nothing else, they might learn from its pages that
every proposal, great or small, which they pressed on
the attention of foreign Courts, was in flat and flagrant
contradiction to the Law of Nations. They appointed
a perfect swarm of envoys and agents, and invested
them with extensive powers. They fixed the salaries
of their ambassadors, and left them to be paid by the
novel expedient of borrowing money from the Courts to
which they were accredited. They arranged a separate
cipher with each of their emissaries ; ^ they instructed
him in the mysteries of invisible ink ; and they care-
fully specified the weight of shot which would be
required to sink his bag of papers if ever, in the course
of a voyage, the ship in which he travelled was in
danger of being overhauled by a British frigate. And,
above all, they laid down principles, and invented
methods, which in process of time would have revolu-
tionised the whole system of diplomacy, if they had
been recommended for general imitation by success,
instead of being discredited by notorious failure.^
1 A curious specimen of these ciphers is given in a note on page io8
of the Second Volume of this history.
* Wharton's Introduction^ Chapters i and 9. Franklin to Dumas ;
Philadelphia, December 19, 1775. Arthur Lee to the Committee of
FREDERIC OF PRUSSIA 44 1
Among the authoritative canons of diplomacy are the
three settled rules that an envoy should not be pressed
upon a foreign Court which is unwilling to receive one ;
that, when proposals of an exceptional and momentous
character are submitted to a foreign government, the
case should be put forward with circumspection, and
the ground carefully prepared beforehand ; and that,
where a nation is unable to command the services of
professional diplomatists, its ambassadors should be men
who have given proof of ability and discretion in other,
and kindred, departments of State business. Benjamin
Franklin, the only American who had had experience
in dealing with European Cabinets, urged these con-
siderations upon his brother-members ; but the Lees
and the Adamses, and those with whom they habitually
acted, were enamoured of a theory which not even
Franklin could induce them to abandon. The same
political party within the walls of Congress, which
believed in amateur generals, and advocated a head-
long strategy in war, pinned its faith on amateur ambas-
sadors, and maintained that all negotiations with external
governments should be conducted in a blunt and uncere-
monious style. '' Militia diplomatists," (said John
Adams,) *' sometimes gain victories over regular troops,
even by departing from the rules." ^ That was the doc-
trine of the hour ; and the politicans who then guided
the counsels of America acted up to it without qualifica-
tion, and without reserve. They extemporised a diplo-
matic service by the easy process of nominating any
American Whig who happened to be in Europe when
Secret Correspondence ; June 3, 1776. Committee of Secret Correspon-
dence to Captain Hammond ; Baltimore, Jan. 2, 1777.
1 John Adams to Robert R. Livingston; Feb. 21, 1782. Adams -said,
in the same letter, that a man might be unacceptable at the Court to
which he was sent, and yet successfully accomplish the object of his
mission. That would be true of those who, like Adams himself, and the
younger Laurens, brought to the unaccustomed work of diplomacy an
exalted character, and a strong intellect ; but the typical American emis-
sary, in the earlier period of the Revolution, was endowed with neither
the one nor the other.
442 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
the Revolution broke out, and who had a mind for
public employment. None of these ready-made ambas-
sadors possessed any aptitude for their new vocation ;
their antecedents had often been dubious ; and their
subsequent history, in some cases, was nothing better
than deplorable. Always without invit^-tion, and for
the most part in the teeth of strenuous remonstrances,
they were despatched to the capital of every leading
European country, or at all events as far across the
frontier as they were allowed to penetrate. The accepta-
bility of the individual envoy has always been accounted
a prime factor in the success of his mission ; but
anything less resembling a persona grata cannot be
pictured than an ex-barrister or commission agent, —
with the gift of the tongue, but not of tongues, — forcing
his way into a royal antechamber as the representative of
a Republic which had never been officially recognised ;
begging in voluble and idiomatic English for a large
loan of public money ; and exhorting the Ministers of
the Court, within whose precincts he had trespassed, to
embark upon a course of treacherous hostility against
a powerful monarch with whom they were living on
terms of apparent amity.
Spain, of all the great European powers, required
the most cautious and delicate handling. Her wars
with England had left her embittered and vindictive,
perilously weak and terribly poor. The British garrison
at Gibraltar was a thorn in her side which she would
risk a very serious operation to extract ; but she dis-
criminated between the various expedients that pre-
sented themselves for retaliating upon her ancient
enemy. She was prepared to encourage disaffection,
and to subsidise rebellion, among the Catholics of
Ireland ; ^ but she watched the revolt of the British
colonies in America with small sympathy, and grave
uneasiness on her own account. The population of the
Spanish dependencies on the further side of the Atlantic
1 Letter of the Marquis de Grimaldi from Madrid to the Spanish
Ambassador at Paris ; 26 February 1777. Doniol ; Tome I., Page 335.
FREDERIC OF PRUSSIA 443
far exceeded that of the mother-country. They were
bound to Spain by no sentiment of patriotism, no affec-
tion for the reigning family, and no community of
political rights and privileges. The union between the
component parts of the empire depended exclusively
on material force ; and the material force of the Spanish
Government had been reduced very low indeed.^ Louis
the Sixteenth's ministers were insistent in their proposal
that both branches of the House of Bourbon should join
in the crusade against England. But Charles the Third,
and his able and honest Chief of the Cabinet, the Count
Florida Blanca, listened to the suggestion with distrust
and misgiving ; and when, after long hesitation, and
many qualms of conscience, they at length yielded to
French importunity, they never ceased to suspect, in
their inmost hearts, that their alliance with the Amer-
ican republic was a suicidal policy. Spanish Legiti-
mists of pure blood believe, to this very hour, that all
the subsequent misfortunes of their cause, and country,
are due to the madness of the old Spanish Court in
assisting the rebels of New England and Virginia against
their lawful Sovereign.^
The Lees of Westmoreland County in Virginia, when
the Revolution began, might plausibly be described by
their admirers as the governing family of America.^
1 Bancroft's History of the common action of France and America in
the War of Independence ; Chapter I.
2 " The disregard of the Legitimist principle by France and Spain,
between 1776 and 1782, led to the French Revolution, the invasion of
Spain by the French, and to revolutions in all the Spanish possessions on
the American Continent. The rebellions in Cuba, and the Philippines, are
the last direct consequences of the help which Charles the I'hird gave
the Americans in their War of Independence." These sentences are
taken from an Address, presented to Don Carlos by some of his leading
adherents during the recent conflict between the United States and Spain.
•^ "That band of brothers, intrepid and unchangeable, who, like the
Greeks at Thermopylae, stood in the gap, in defence of their country, from
the first glimmering of the Revolution in the horizon, through all its
rising light, to the perfect day." This picture of the Lee family was
drawn by John Adams, at the age of eighty-three. He put no shade into
his group of portraits, although there was enough, and to spare, of it in
one of the sitters. But it would be unjust to deny that all the Lees were
sincere partisans of the Revolution.
444 ^-^-^ AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Two of them were Signers ; and one, the celebrated
Richard Henry Lee, was an orator of great influence,
and remarkable charm. Another pair of the brethren
sought their fortune in England, — William as a mer-
chant, and Arthur at the Bar. They plunged deep into
the municipal politics of London, at a time when the
London Corporation was a living and powerful force in
the politics of the empire. WiUiam Lee, in 1775, was
elected an alderman on the Wilkes ticket, after a heated
contest in which his brother Arthur astonished the
Liverymen by a display of that eloquence which was
native in his family. Arthur Lee had considerable
talent ; and he might have played a fine part in the
American Revolution if his self-esteem had not been
in vast excess of his public spirit. His constitu-
tional inability to see anything in his colleagues and
comrades except their least pleasing and admirable
qualities, and his readiness to imagine evil in them
where none existed, marred his own usefulness as a
servant of the people, and led him, in more than one
instance, to inflict cruel and irreparable injury upon
others. Such was the man who, in the spring of 1777,
set off on the road to Madrid as the show ambassador
of the United States. He heralded his approach by a
memorial to the Court of Spain describing the American
Republic as an infant Hercules who had strangled ser-
pents in the cradle ; and declaring, (with a change of
metaphor inside the space of three sentences,) that the
hour had come to clip the wings of Britain, and pinion
her for ever. The Spanish ministers replied, quietly
and curtly, that Lee, in his eagerness to serve his own
country, had not considered the difficulties and obliga-
tions of those whom he was addressing. His progress
southward was stopped short at Burgos by order of
the Court ; and, like other people who have not been
wanted in Spain, he was gradually compelled to retreat
beyond the Ebro to Vittoria, and thence expelled in
rout and confusion back across the Pyrenees.
Arthur Lee did not stand alone in the frustration
FREDERIC OF PRUSSIA 445
of his hopes, and the collapse of his enterprise. His
brother William, who had been appointed by Congress
to be their national representative in Austria, was duly
admonished that his presence would be unacceptable
to the Emperor Joseph ; and he was careful not to
show himself within a hundred leagues of Vienna.
Ralph Izard of South Carolina had for some years
resided in Europe as "a gentleman of fortune." He
was named American Minister at Florence ; but he
never passed the Alps ; for the Grand Duke of Tuscany
let him know by post that his credentials would not
be recognised. The most disagreeably situated among
all the batch of envoys was Francis Dana of Massachu-
setts, who had been told off to Russia, and who walked
fearlessly into the she-bear's den. Catherine had no
use for him. Asa politic Sovereign she shrank from
giving unnecessary offence to England ; and a demure
Bostonian was not the sort of foreign visitor whom, as
a woman, she cared to have about her. Her ministers
informed Dana that he must not so much as petition
to be received at Court. He lived in mortifying isola-
tion. Official society closed its doors against him ; and
his existence was studiously ignored by the English,
who were the only people in St. Petersburg with whom
he could exchange an intelligible sentence.^ Rebuffed
in every quarter of Europe, like so many commercial
travellers forbidden to display their wares, the baffled
diplomatists fell back upon Paris, where they led an
aimless and restless existence ; — interfering in the nego-
tiations conducted by the American Legation at the
Court of France ; squabbling over their share in the
^ Wharton's Introduction ; Chapter 14. Dana used to write in Eng-
lish to Verac, the French Ambassador at St. Petersburg; and Verac
got his letters translated, and then answered in French. " It is very
doubtful, Sir," (so Verac warned Dana on one occasion,) " whether
the Cabinet of Her Imperial Majesty will consent to recognise the
Minister of a Power which has not as yet, in their eyes, a political exist-
ence, and expose tViemselves to the complaints which the Court of London
will not fail to make. ... I ought to inform you that the Count Panin,
and the Count d'Ostermann, do not understand English. This will
render your communication with the ministers difficult."
446 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
fund available for the payment of their salaries ; and
sending monthly reports to Congress which, as often as
not, failed to arrive at their destination. For the risks
of communication by sea were so great that American
state secrets were no secrets for the English Cabinet.
The Republic had as many as twelve paid agents on the
Continent of Europe, all of whom wrote home on every
opportunity ; and yet there was once a period of eleven
months during which not a single line from any one
of them reached Philadelphia.^ It was calculated that
more than half the letters written by, and to, the
American envoys in Europe were captured on deep
water by British cruisers ; and King George's servants
in Downing Street were kept informed of the plans and
intentions of Congress as promptly, as regularly, and as
circumstantially as the Ministers of Congress abroad.
Arthur Lee, very soon after his return from Spain,
started from Paris with the intention of presenting him-
self to Frederic the Great in the capacity of Minister
for the United States at the Prussian Court. He was
accompanied by a Secretary of Legation in the person
of Stephen Sayre, an American born, who had been a
Sheriff of London, and who had dipped deep in the
politics of that city, where he more than once was in
hot, and rather dirty, water. Lee, on his arrival at
Berlin, was met by an official notification which, as
far as he could puzzle out the language employed
to convey it, indicated to him that his visit was an
unexpected and unappreciated honour, but that he
might remain in the city as a private individual, with-
out assuming a diplomatic character.^ He employed
himself in drawing up a memorial which contained a
great deal of advice about Frederic's own business,
1 Wharton's Introduction ; Pages 461-466.
2 Baron de Schulenburg to Arthur Lee ; Berlin, May 20, and June 9,
1777. "I have received," (the Baron wrote,) " the letter which you did
me the honour of writing to me yesterday ; and I imagine, from its con-
clusion, that, on account of the difference of language, you did not, per-
haps, take in the true sense some of the expressions which I used in our
conversation."
FREDERIC OF PRUSSIA 447
enforced in a style curiously unsuited to that monarch's
literary taste. ^ Lee, in what the King must have
regarded as a tone of grandiose impertinence, lectured
his Majesty on the advantages which he would reap
by allowing American privateers to sell their prizes
in Prussian harbours, and by supplying the American
troops with arms and ammunition. Attacking his hero
on what was supposed to be his weak side, Lee
suggested to the Prussian ministers that, for every
musket which their royal master exported to New
England at a cost to himself of less than five dollars, he
might carry back as much Virginian tobacco as would
sell for forty dollars in Europe.^ Frederic was deaf to
these blandishments ; and the American strangers, for
want of more profitable occupation, passed much of
their time in watching the soldiers of the most famous
army in Europe go through their exercise. The letter,
in which Arthur Lee communicated to General Wash-
ington his observations on the Potsdam discipline,
suggests a suspicion that some Prussian subaltern,
with a turn for mystification, must have attended
him as his military cicerone. He reported that King
Frederic's infantry, instead of taking aim, were taught
to slant the barrel downwards so that the bullet
would strike the ground ten yards in front of them.
''This depression," wrote Lee, ** is found necessary
to counteract the elevation which the act of firing
gives to the musket."^ That was a lesson in practical
marksmanship which the American Commander-in-
Chief was at liberty to impart, for all that it was worth,
to Colonel Morgan and his Virginian riflemen.
The King of Prussia, at that moment, would will-
1 Lee confidently assured Frederic that he need not be afraid of
England. " You have," he wrote, " no vessels of war to cause your flag
to be respected. But, Sire, you have the best regiments in the world ;
and Great Britain, destitute as she is of wise counsels, is not so foolish
as to incur the risk of compelling your Majesty to join your valuable
forces to those of her rival."
^ A. Lee to Schulenburg; June 7, 1777.
3 A. Lee to Washington ; Berlin, June 15, 1777.
448 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
ingly have dispensed with the presence at Berlin of any
diplomatic representative of the English-speaking race.
There had been times when the ambassador of Great
Britain stood high in the favour of Frederic the Great.
Sir Andrew Mitchell was his comrade of the camp, and
the partner of his interior counsels, throughout the
worst hardships and anxieties of the Seven Years' War ;
and he had been on excellent terms with Mitchell's
successor, — that same James Harris who afterwards
made a considerable figure as the first Earl of Malmes-
bury. Harris had very recently been promoted to St.
Petersburg, and had been followed at Berlin by Hugh
Elliot, a cadet of the house of Minto. Elliot possessed
much of the family cleverness, and already was versed
in the lighter aspects of several European Courts. He
had served with spirit against the Turks, as a volunteer
in the Russian army ; but as yet he was only five-
and-twenty, and no wiser than people of the same
age who are not ambassadors. Frederic viewed the
appointment as a personal slight upon himself, and told
the Comte de Maltzan, his diplomatic representative in
London, that he had half a mind to recall him, and
replace him at the Court of St. James's by a captain of
infantry. That was the way, (he said,) to repay the
English government with like for like.^
While the king was in this humour he was informed
that the servants of the British Embassy had broken
into Arthur Lee's lodging, and purloined his box of
secret papers, the contents of which had been copied
out by a large staff of writers, and despatched to
England. Frederic, who had been through graver
troubles, did not lose his self-possession over an
incident which had a redeeming feature in the eyes
of the old cynic, inasmuch as it provided him with a
fertile, and congenial, theme for banter and irony.
" Oh, the worthy disciple," (he cried,) '' of Lord
Bute ! What an incomparable personage is your God-
1 Le roi Frederic au Comte de Maltzan, Potsdam, lO Octobre 1 776;
27 Janvier, 24 Fevrier, 1779.
FREDERIC OF PRUSSIA 449
dam Elliot ! ^ The English ought to blush for sending
such ministers abroad." He vented his wrath, during
the course of the next fortnight, in phrases of droll
vehemence ; but he was not disposed to bear hard
upon a young man of promise who attempted no
defence, and who appealed in becoming terms to the
royal clemency. Elliot accepted the whole responsi-
bility ; declared, — truly or diplomatically, as the case
might be, — that the British government had no share
in a transaction which he acknowledged to be unjusti-
fiable ; and submitted himself humbly to the judgment
of the King of Prussia. Regret was duly expressed by
George the Third's Cabinet ; and the Secretary of State
rebuked Mr. Elliot for the impropriety of his conduct,
and warned him that nothing except the generous
behaviour of His Prussian Majesty had on this occasion
prevented the necessity of removing him from his post.^
Frederic's anger and annoyance, in point of fact, were
directed rather against the victim, than the contriver,
of the outrage. The King was only too well aware
that the notice, which he had been obliged to take, of
an international scandal arising within the circuit
of his own capital, would be construed by the world
at large as an indirect recognition of the American
Republic. His hand had been forced, — a sensation
which a strong man never relishes ; and the effects
1 Le roi Frederic au Comte de Maltzan ; Potsdam, 30 Juin 1777.
Frederic did not easily tire of an old, or even a very old, jest ; and, now
that our countrymen had lost his good graces, he often applied to them
that nickname by which, three centuries and a half before, they were
known on the continent of Europe among people who did not love them.
*' If," said Joan of Arc, " there were a hundred thousand more Goddams
in France than there are to-day, they should not have this kingdom."
2 The tone of this communication from the English Foreign Office,
and the substance of that which followed, indicate that Lord Suffolk had
known a great deal more about the seizure of I^ee's papers than he now
chose to admit. ** A little later, another despatch informs Mr. Elliot that
the King of England had entirely overlooked the exceptional circum-
stances of the business, in consideration of the loyal zeal which occasioned
them ; and the despatch closes by the announcement that the expenses,
incurred by Mr. Elliot, would be indemnilied by the Crown." Alemoir of
the Right Honourable Hugh Elliot, by the Countess of Minto ; Chapter 3.
VOL. IV. 2c;
450 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
of his disgust and resentment were soon apparent
Arthur Lee's mission came to an abrupt termination.
His papers had been abstracted on the twenty-fifth of
June ; and before the last day of July he was back
again in Paris. Four months afterwards he intimated
to the Prussian government that his brother William
was appointed to succeed him at Berlin ; but Frederic
had had enough of the Lees, and replied by a brief and
peremptory refusal.^ No sane man, in the face of such
a prohibition, would venture to thrust himself into the
territory of a monarch who had spent the seven best
years of his life in proving that he could make himself
supremely unpleasant to an invader.
The early relations between the United States of
America, and the monarchies of Europe, may be
studied with advantage by those writers who attach
little or no importance to the personal factor in history.
The prospects of the young Republic were seriously,
and to all appearance irretrievably, damnified by the
mismanagement of Congress; but the position was
saved by the ability, the discretion, and the force of
character of one single man. Benjamin Franklin was
now past seventy. He had begun to earn his bread as
a child of ten ; he commenced as an author at sixteen ;
and he had ever since been working with his hands,
and taxing his brain, unintermittently, and to the top
of his power. Such exertions were not maintained
with impunity. He kept his strength of will un-
impaired, his mind clear and lively, and his temper
equable, by a life-long habit of rigid abstemiousness ;
but he already felt the approach of painful diseases that
tortured him cruelly before the immense undertaking,
which still lay before him, had been half accomplished.
In September 1776 he was elected Commissioner to
France, by a unanimous Resolution of Congress.
Franklin, in the highest sense of the term, was
1 Baron de Schulenburg to A, Lee ; Berlin, November 28, 1777.
FRANKLIN IN PARIS 45 I
a professional diplomatist; for he had passed sixteen
years in England as Agent for his colony ; and his
individual qualities had gained for him a political
influence, and a social standing, out of all proportion
to the comparatively humble interests which he
represented at the British Court. The ambassadors
of the Great Powers, who were resident in London,
treated him as one of themselves. He was old enough
to be the father of most among them, and wise enough
to be the adviser of all ; and, towards the end of his
time, they united in regarding him as in some sort the
doyen of their body. Franklin's knowledge of European
statesmen, and courtiers, taught him to anticipate noth-
ing but failure and humiliation from the diplomatic
methods which Congress favoured ; and he had no
confidence whatever in the emissaries whom it thought
fit to employ. The acceptance of the laborious and
perilous mission, to which he was now invited, pre-
sented itself to his mind in the light of an absolute
duty. His feelings remain on record in a letter which
he subsequently addressed to a friend who urged him,
in those " tempestuous times," to take some care of
himself, and of his own safety. " I thank you," he
wrote, " for your kind caution ; but, having nearly
finished a long life, I set but little value on what
remains of it. Like a draper, when one chaffers with
him for a remnant, I am ready to say : * As it is only
the fag end, I will not differ with you about it. Take
it for what you please.' " ^
We are told that " before Franklin left for France
he placed in the hands of Congress, then in dire
necessity for want of money, all his available funds,
knowing that, if the cause failed, his loan failed with
it. "2 It was a paltry sum according to American
standards of to-day ; for the capital accumulated by
the most famous inventor, and the most indefatigable
municipal administrator, of his generation, amounted
1 Franklin to David Hartley ; April, 1778.
^ Wharton's Introduction \ Chapter 10.
■ZG 2
452 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
to just three thousand pounds : and, when the country
grew poorer still, and it became doubtful whether
Franklin would ever again see the colour of his money,
he acquiesced in his probable loss with the resig-
nation of a disinterested patriot.^ He, and two of
his grandsons, embarked in a sloop of war of sixteen
guns, carrying a consignment of indigo which was to
be sold in France for the purpose of defraying the initial
expenses of the American Legation. The captain was
charged by the Committee of Marine to make the
Doctor's voyage pleasant, and to take his orders about
speaking to any vessel which might be encountered
on the way.2 The weather was rough, and Franklin
suffered much from an old man's ailment, aggravated
by the tossing of the waves ; but he never was fretful,
and never at a loss for occupation and diversion. He
confirmed, or corrected, his former observations on the
temperature of the Gulf-stream ; he experienced the
emotion of being chased by a British war-ship ; and,
after a swift run of thirty days, he sailed into Quiberon
Bay, accompanied, to the wonder and amusement of
Europe, by two prizes laden with a large and varied
assortment of goods, the value of which he doubtless
could calculate more accurately and quickly than
any other man on board. ^ When he had recovered
sufficient health he travelled to Paris, where he was
awaited by Silas Deane and Arthur Lee, whom Congress
had associated with him on the Commission. Before
the end of the year the three Americans had an inter-
view with the Comte de Vergennes, and placed in his
^ Twelve years afterwards Franklin took stock of his investment. " I
have received," he wrote, " no interest for several years ; and, if I were
now to sell the principal, I should not get more than a sixth part. You
must noi ascribe this to want of honesty in our government, but to want
of ability ; the war having exhausted all the faculties of the country."
'^ American Archives for October 1776.
3 Walpole to the Countess of Ossory ; Dec. 17, 1776. Beaumarchais
to Vergennes ; 16 December, 1776. "The noise," wrote Beaumarchais,
" made by the arrival of Franklin is inconceivable. This brave old man
allowed his vessel to make two prizes on the way, in spite of the personal
risk he thereby incurred. And we French permit ourselves to be afraid ! "
FRANKLIN IN PARIS 453
hands a very brief and closely argued letter, which bore
in every sentence the marks of condensation and excision
by FrankUn's pen. The CommL-^sioners offered France
and Spain the friendship and aihance of the United
States ; they made a promise, (which, as the event
showed, was not theirs to give,) that a vigorously
conducted war would expel the British from their settle-
ments in the West Indies ; they asked for thirty thousand
firelocks and bayonets ; and they proposed to hire
from King Louis eight ships of the line, grounding
their request on the analogy of the battalions which
the Duke of Brunswick, and the Landgrave of Hesse,
had placed at the disposal of England.^ The French
government returned a very civil, but guarded, answer ;
by word of mouth, and not on paper, in order that the
envoys of Congress might have no compromising
document to exhibit, or to mislay and lose. But the
mere circumstance that proposals so audacious and
unusual had not been summarily rejected by a Cabinet
of responsible French ministers was a point gained
for America, and a long step by France on the down-
ward road which led straight to an English war.
The Marquis de Noailles, who then was French
Minister at the Court of St. James's, had been in-
structed to assure the English Cabinet that Franklin's
presence in Europe was a matter of no political sig-
nificance whatsoever. Acting upon the maxim that a
man is best able to deceive others when he is deceived
himself. King Louis's Foreign Secretary was at the
pains to compose an artful, and most insincere, de-
spatch with the express intention of hoodwinking and
misleading King Louis's ambassador. Vergennes in-
formed Noailles that Doctor Franklin conducted him-
self modestly in Parisian society, where he had renewed
acquaintance with some old friends, and was surrounded
by a host of the curious. His conversation, which be-
tokened the man of talent and intelligence, was in a
^ Doniol; Tome I., Chapitre 8.
454 ^^^ AMERICAN REVOLUTION
quiet and subdued tone ; and his whole course of life
was transparently candid and guileless.^ There was
something exquisitely absurd in this fancy portrait of
Benjamin Franklin as a philosopher travelling in search
of scientific facts, and actuated by a mild and amiable
interest in the manners and customs of the foreign
country where he chanced to find himself. Lord Stor-
mont, the English ambassador in France, took occasion
to warn the French government that the Doctor, simple
as he seemed, had got the better of three successive
English Foreign Ministers ; and that he never was so
formidable, and never so little to be trusted, as when he
appeared to have no room in his mind for affairs of
State.
Lord Stormont was right. Franklin had come to
Europe for the sole purpose of engaging in a stern and
single-handed conflict with the difficulties and problems
of a supreme crisis ; and the old man's tale of work
during the next eight years was a record which has
seldom been beaten. Europe, (it has been truly said,)
was henceforward the centre of action, where the
funds for carrying on the Rebellion were raised, and
the supplies required by the American armies were
mainly purchased. In Europe, moreover, as a conse-
quence of the impossibility of prompt and regular com-
munication across the seas with Congress, the diplomacy
of the Republic was necessarily moulded. American
privateers were fitted out, their crews enlisted, and
their prizes sold, in European ports ; and all controverted
questions about the legal validity of their captures
were examined and decided in Europe, and not in
America. " It was by Franklin alone that these various
functions were exercised. It was on Franklin alone
that fell the enormous labour of keeping the accounts
connected with these various departments." ^ He had
^ Le Comte de Vergennes au Marquis de Noailles; lo Janvier, 1777.
2 Wharton, in the tenth chapter of his Introduction^ gives an ex-
haustive account of Franklin's work in France. His functions, (Wharton
writes,) " were of the same general character as those which in England
FRANKLIN IN PARIS 455
no staff of clerks at his command, and no deft and
devoted subordinates to collect information, to sift corre-
spondence, to prepare despatches for signature, and to
save their over-burdened chief from the infliction of a
personal interview with all the idlers, and jobbers, and
soldiers of fortune, and real or sham men of science,
who daily thronged his door. His only assistant was
his elder grandson, — a worthy youth who could write
from dictation, and copy a letter in good round hand ;
but who did not possess, and never acquired, the art of
drafting an important paper.
From other Americans then resident in Paris Franklin
received little help, and a great deal of most unnecessary
hindrance. Silas Deane, who had business knowledge
and business aptitudes, was of service in arranging con-
tracts, and inspecting warlike stores ; and Deane, after
Franklin's arrival in Europe, had the good sense to con-
fine himself strictly within his own province. But
Arthur Lee was an uneasy, and a most dangerous, yoke-
fellow. Lee was a sinister personage in the drama of
the American Revolution ; — the assassin of other men's
reputations and careers, and the suicide of his own.
He now was bent on defaming and destroying Silas
Deane, whom he fiercely hated, and on persuading the
government at home to transfer Franklin to Vienna, so
that he himself might remain behind in France as
the single representative of America at the Court of
Versailles. The group of politicians in Philadelphia,
who were caballing against George Washington, main-
tained confidential, and not very creditable, relations
with Arthur Lee at Paris. His eloquent brother was
his mouthpiece in Congress ; and he plied Samuel
Adams with a series of venomous libels upon Franklin,
which were preserved unrebuked, and too evidently had
been read with pleasure. The best that can be said for
Arthur Lee is that, in his personal dealings with the
are exercised by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Secretary for
Foreign Affairs, the Admiralty Board, the War Secretaries, and the Courts
of Admiralty."
456 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
colleagues whom he was seeking to ruin, he made no
pretence of a friendship which he did not feel ; and his
attitude towards his brother envoys was, to the last
degree, hostile and insulting. He found an ally in
Ralph Izard, who lived at Paris, an ambassador in
partibus, two hundred leagues away from the capital to
which he was accredited ; drawing the same salary as
Franklin ; denouncing him in open letters addressed to
the President of Congress; and insisting, with queru-
lous impertinence, on his right to participate in all the
secret counsels of the French Court. Franklin for
some months maintained an unruffled composure. He
had never been quick to mark offences ; and he now
had reached that happy period of life when a man
values the good-will of his juniors, but troubles himself
very little about their disapproval. He ignored the
provocation given by his pair of enemies, and extended
to them a hospitality which they, on their part, did not
refrain from accepting, although his food and wine
might well have choked them.^ But the moment came
when his own self-respect, and a due consideration for
the public interest, forbade Franklin any longer to pass
over their conduct in silence ; and he spoke out in a
style which astonished both of them at the time, and
has gratified the American reader ever since. He
castigated Arthur Lee in as plain and vigorous English
as ever was set down on paper, and informed Ralph
Izard, calmly but very explicitly, that he would do well
to mind his own business.^
1 Wharton's Introduction ; Chapter 12.
2 " It is true that I have omitted answering some of your letters,
particularly your angry ones, in which you, with very magisterial airs,
schooled and documented me as if I had been one of your domestics. I
saw, in the strongest light, the importance of our living in decent civility
towards each other, while our great affairs were depending here. I saw
your jealous, suspicious, malignant, and quarrelsome temper, which was
daily manifesting itself against Mr. Deane, and almost every other person
you had any concern with. I therefore passed your affronts in silence ;
did not answer, but burnt, your angry letters ; and received you, when I
next saw you, with the same civility as if you had never wrote them."
Franklin to Arthur Lee ; Passy, 4 April, 1778.
FRANKLIN IN PARIS 45/
Franklin, as long as he was on European soil, had
no need to stand upon ceremony when dealing with a
refractory fellow-countryman ; for he was in great
authority on that side of the Atlantic Ocean. Europe
had welcomed and accepted him, not as a mere spokes-
man and agent of the government at Philadelphia, but
as the living and breathing embodiment of the Amer-
ican Republic. No statesman would do business with
anybody but FrankHn. No financier would negotiate
a loan except with him, or pay over money into other
hands but his. '' It was to Franklin that both the
French and English ministries turned, as if he were not
only the sole representative of the United States in
Europe, but as if he were endowed with plenipotentiary
power." ^ Nine-tenths of the public letters addressed
to the American Commissioners were brought to his
house; "and," (so his colleagues admitted,) "they
would ever be carried wherever Doctor Franklin is." ^
He transacted his affairs with Louis the Sixteenth's
ministers on a footing of equality, and, (as time went
on,) of unostentatious but unquestionable superiority.
Thomas Jefferson, an impartial and most competent
observer, had on one occasion been contending that
American diplomatists were always spoiled for use after
they had been kept seven years abroad. But this,
(said Jefferson,) did not apply to Franklin, "who was
America itself when in France, not subjecting himself
to French influence," but imposing American influence
upon France, and upon the whole course and conduct
of her national policy.
The fact was that the French ministry, in its
relations to Franklin, had to reckon with a political
phenomenon of exceptional nature, and portentous
significance. The royal authority in France was un-
controlled by any effective, and continuously operating,
machinery of national self-government; but that very
1 Wharton's Introduction ; Chapter il.
* John Adams to Jonathan Jackson ; Paris, 17 November, 1782.
458 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
circumstance lent force and weight to public opinion,
at those rare conjunctures when public opinion had
been strongly moved. If ever the privileged, the
moneyed, and the intellectual classes united in one way
of thinking, their influence was all the more irresistible
because it was not defined, and limited, by the pro-
visions of a written constitution. The rest of the nation,
below those classes, was a powerless and voiceless pro-
letariat ; while above them there was nothing except a
handful of Viscounts and Marquises, the Royal ministers
of the hour, who were drawn from their ranks, and
lived in their society, and who were mortally afraid of
their disapprobation, and still more of their ridicule.
France, in the last resort, was ruled by fashion ; and
Franklin had become the idol of fashion like no
foreigner, and perhaps no Frenchman, either before or
since.
His immense and, (as he himself was the foremost
to acknowledge,) his extravagant popularity was founded
on a solid basis of admiration and esteem. The origin
of his fame dated from a time which seemed fabulously
distant to the existing generation. His qualities and
accomplishments were genuine and unpretentious ; and
his services to the world were appreciated by high
and low, rich and poor, in every country where men
learned from books, or profited by the discoveries of
science. His Poor Richard, — which expounded and
elucidated a code of rules for the everyday conduct of
life with sagacity that never failed, and wit that very
seldom missed the mark, — had been thrice translated
into French, had gone through many editions, and had
been recommended by priests and bishops for common
use in their parishes and dioceses. As an investigator,
and an experimentalist, he was more widely known
even than as an author; for he had always aimed at
making natural philosophy the handmaid of material
progress. Those homely and practical inventions, by
which he had done so much to promote the comfort
and convenience of the average citizen, had caused
FRANKLIN IN PARIS 459
him to be regarded as a public benefactor in every
civilised community throughout the world. ^ His
reputation, (so John Adams wrote,) was more universal
than that of Leibnitz or Newton. " His name was
familiar to government and people, to foreign countries,
— to nobility, clergy, and philosophers, as well as to
plebeians, — to such a degree that there was scarcely
a peasant or a citizen, a valet, coachman, or footman,
a lady's chambermaid, or scullion in the kitchen, who
did not consider him a friend to humankind." If
Franklin, at seventy years of age, had visited France
as a private tourist, his progress through her cities
would have been one long ovation ; and her enthusiasm
transcended all bounds when, coming as an ambassador
from a new world beyond the seas, he appealed to
French chivalry on behalf of a young nation struggling
for freedom. "His mission," (said a French writer who
was no blind partisan of Franklin,) ** flattered all the
bright and generous ideas which animated France. He
caressed our happiest hopes, our most gilded chimaeras.
He came across the ocean to win liberty for his own
country ; and he brought liberty to us. He was the rep-
resentative of a people still primitive and unsophisticated,
— or who appeared so in our eyes. He professed no
rehgious creed except tolerance, and kindliness of heart.
France, moved by a thousand passions and a thousand
caprices, prostrated herself at the feet of a man who had
1 The Franklin stoves were much used in Paris. One of the French
ministers was asked whether he had as yet put them into his reception-
rooms. "No," (he replied ;) " for the English ambassador would not then
consent to warm himself at my fire."
There was talk, among men of science, about George the Third having
ordered the disuse at Kew Palace of lightning-conductors on the Franklin
pattern ; but the Doctor himself refused to be drawn into the controversy.
"Disputes," he wrote, "are apt to sour one's temper and disturb one's
quiet. I have no private interest in the reception of my inventions by the
world, having never made, nor proposed to make, the least profit by any of
them. The King's changing his pointed conductors for blunt ones is,
therefore, a matter of small importance to me. If I had a wish about it,
it would be that he rejected them altogether as ineffectual ; for it is only
since he thought himself, and his family, safe from the thunder of Heaven
that he dared to use his own thunder in destroying his innocent subjects."
460 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
no caprices and no passions. She made him the symbol
and object of her adoration ; and Franklin took rank
above Voltaire and Rousseau, by the side of Socrates." ^
One such account must serve for all. It would be
tedious, and superfluous, to multiply quotations from
contemporary authors who have recorded the passionate
devotion, and, (what in parallel cases has been a rare
feature,) the invincible constancy and fidelity with
which French society abandoned itself to the worship of
Franklin. The wise old American was keenly alive to
the excess, and the occasional absurdity, of the adula-
tion by which he was encompassed. He had measured,
more accurately than any man then living, the true
and exact worth of Benjamin Franklin; and he did
nothing whatever to encourage the exaggerated estimate
of that personage which most Frenchmen, and all French
women, persisted in cherishing. He lived his own life,
and talked his own talk, and allowed the imaginative
and emotional Parisians to make what they chose both
of the one and the other. The French Government,
anxious to keep their distinguished guest as far as
possible removed from hostile supervision and imperti-
nent curiosity, placed at his disposal a house and
garden at Passy, which now is well within the circuit
of the fortifications, but then was still " a neat village,
on high ground, half a mile from the city."^ Here
Franklin dwelt, as pleasantly lodged as in an elm-shaded
suburb of his own Philadelphia; superintending the
education of his smaller grandson, who was a child of
seven ; entertaining Americans, young and old, at a
quiet dinner on the Sunday afternoon ; working, during
^ Le Dix-huitieme Siecle en Angleterre par M. Philarete Chasles,
Professeur au College de France ; Paris, 1846.
2 Franklin to Mrs. Margaret Stevenson; Passy, 25 January, 1779.
John Adams, on his arrival in France, was greatly exercised at finding
his brother Commissioner so desirably lodged, — "at what rent," (he said,)
"I never could discover ; but, from the magnificence of the place, it was
universally suspected to be enormously high." It is now well ascertained
that Monsieur Ray de Chaumont, under whom Franklin sat rent-free^
was acting on behalf of the Government.
FRANKLIN IN PARIS 46 1
odd hours, in the Royal Laboratory, which stood close
at hand ; and making a show of drinking the Passy
waters. He was seldom seen on foot in the streets of
the capital ; and he took his exercise, with conscientious
regularity, in his garden when the sun shone, and
within doors during the months of winter. " I walk,"
(so he told John Adams in November 1782,) "every
day in my chamber. I walk quick, and for an hour, so
that I go a league. I make a point of religion of it."
When he appeared in public he was dressed in good
broadcloth of a sober tint ; conspicuous with his long
straight hair, whitened by age, and not by art; and
wearing a pair of spectacles, to remedy an old man's
dimness of vision, and a cap of fine marten's fur, because
he had an old man's susceptibility to cold.
Franklin's costume had not been designed with any
idea of pleasing the Parisians ; but it obtained an extra-
ordinary success, and has left a mark on history. Fine
gentlemen, with their heads full of the new philosophy,
regarded his unembroidered coat, and unpowdered locks,
as a tacit, but visible, protest against those luxuries and
artificialities which they all condemned, but had not the
smallest intention of themselves renouncing. He re-
minded them of everything and everybody that Jean
Jacques Rousseau had taught them to admire. The
Comte de S^gur declared that " Franklin's antique
and patriarchal aspect seemed to transport into the
midst of an enervated, and servile, civilisation a Repub-
lican of Rome of the time of Cato and Fabius, or a sage
who had consorted with Plato." Some compared him
to Diogenes, and some to Phocion, — about whom they
can have known very little ; for, if Phocion had been a
Pennsylvanian of Anno Domini 1776, he would, beyond
all question, have been a strenuous and uncompromis-
ing supporter of the British connection. Readers of
femile, who then comprised three-fourths of the fashion-
able world, delighted to recognise in the American
stranger an express and living image of the Savoyard
Vicar ; and it was believed, with some reason, that his
462 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
views on religion nearly corresponded to those of
Rousseau's famous ecclesiastic, although Franklin
would most certainly have compressed his Profession
of Faith into much shorter compass.^ The great
French ladies were attracted and fascinated by his quiet
self-possession, his benign courtesy, and his playful, yet
always rational, conversation. The ardour of Franklin's
votaries sometimes manifested itself with an exuberance
which made it difficult for him to keep his countenance.
When he paid a visit to Madame d'Houdetot at her
country residence in the Valley of Montmorency, his
hostess, — attended by the solemn and inperturbable
Marquis who then was her lover, as he was the lover in
turn of the most celebrated blue-stockings of that
generation, — came forth to meet him, as if he were a
royal personage, before he entered the avenue. She
greeted him with an address in verse ; at dinner he was
regaled by a rhymed compliment, from some Count or
Viscount, between every course, and after the coffee ;
Monsieur d'Houdetot himself, "rising to the sublime of
absurdity in his quality of husband," instituted an
elaborate parallel between Franklin and William Tell,
to the disadvantage of the Swiss patriot ; and the de-
parting guest was ultimately pursued to his coach-door
by a shower of laudatory couplets. To exhibit himself
as the central figure in such scenes was not the least
among the sacrifices which Franklin made upon the
altar of his country.
1 " Ambassadors," (so a French diplomatist informed John Adams,)
" have in all Courts a right to a chapel of their own way ; but Mr.
Franklin never had any. . . . Mr. Franklin adores only great Nature,
which interested many people of both sexes in him." European society
entertained exceedingly vague ideas with regard to Franklin's religious
creed. Some Parisians were deeply impressed by his " Quaker humility,"
and Horace Walpole spoke of him as a Presbyterian. Philarete Chasles
came nearer the mark, and pronounced him a Deist of the school of
Locke. But Franklin was no man's disciple, and his opinions and beliefs
were the home-growth of his own mind. He had been converted to
Deism, at the age of twenty-one, by a sermon preached against the Deists,
" whose arguments," he said, " which were quoted to be refuted, appeared
to me much stronger than the refutations."
FRANKLIN IN PARIS 463
Franklin dined abroad on every weekday ; ^ not
because people thought it their duty to invite him, but
because they never could have too much of his com-
pany. John Adams, before he himself spoke French at
all, gave a disparaging account of Franklin's grammar
and accent ; but Frenchmen praised the ease and skill
with which he employed their language ; and that is
the one point on which no true Parisian will ever con-
descend to flatter. The banquets which he attended
did not afford him unmixed enjoyment ; for he was
almost sure of meeting some officer who wanted to
become a Major General in the American army, or
some chemist with an invention for blowing up the
English fleet, and who only waited to begin their attack
upon him until he had been " put in good humour by a
glass or two of champaigne." The world then dined at
two in the afternoon ; the party broke up as soon as the
dinner had been eaten ; and Franklin's evenings were
very generally spent at the house of his neighbour,
Madame Helvetius, who lived beyond him at Auteuil,
in the direction of the Bois de Boulogne. In this lady's
salon he consorted with the most prominent of his brother
Academicians ; for he had long ere this been elected
a member of their august body. Diderot and Morellet,
Lavoisier, d'Alembert, Condorcet, and Turgot were his
habitual associates, and his attached friends. In Paris
and at Auteuil alike, during the give and take of the
best conversation which the Continent of Europe then
had to show, Franklin never missed an opportunity of
interesting his companions in the cause of America,
and re-assuring them about her future. An undaunted
and persuasive optimist, speaking with the authority of
one who was no mere amateur in war, he imparted to
all around him his own loyal confidence in Washing-
ton's strategy ; and, at the lowest moment of his
country's fortunes, he boldly and cheerfully proclaimed
his settled conviction that it was not the British who
had taken Philadelphia, but Philadelphia which had
^ Franklin to Mrs. Margaret Stevenson ; Passy, 25 January, 1779.
464 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
taken the British.^ No less a writer than the Marquis
de Condorcet has borne witness to the tact and abil-
ity, and the all but universal acceptance, with which
Franklin handled the topic of America. " It was an
honour," said Condorcet, ** to have seen him. People
repeated in all societies what they had heard him say.
Every entertainment which he accepted, every house
where he consented to go, gained him new admirers
who became so many partisans of the American Revolu-
tion."
He was a great ambassador, of a type which the
world had never seen before, and will never see again
until it contains another Benjamin Franklin. Tried
by the searching test of practical performance, he
takes high rank among the diplomatists of history.
His claims to that position have been vindicated,
in a manner worthy of the subject, by an eminent
American publicist of our own generation. There
were conspicuous statesmen, (writes Doctor Wharton,)
at the Congress of Vienna ; but the imposing fabric con-
structed by Metternich, and Nesselrode, and Talley-
rand, with such lofty disregard for national liberties
and popular rights, has long ago perished, while
Franklin's work endures to this hour. It was Frank-
lin who introduced America, on a footing of equality,
into the councils of Europe, and who, in a truer
sense than Canning, called the New World into exist-
ence to redress the balance of the Old. And the
crown and coping-stone of his protracted labours was
that final treaty of peace between Great Britain and the
United States, which of all international settlements
is " the one that has produced the greatest blessings
1 Six weeks after Franklin's arrival in Paris, the Prussian envoy in
France sent the following account of him to King Frederic. " Le Docteur
Franklin n'est pas le niedecin Tant-Pis. Toutes les fois qu'on lui annonce
que les Americains ont ete battus, il dit : ' Tant mieux. Les Anglais
seront bien attrapes.' " When people talked to him despondently about
the prospects of American Independence, Franklin would reply : " ^ ira,
^a ira ; " and it is said that he thus brought into fashion a phrase destined
to be the watchword of the French Revolution.
FRANKLIN IN PARIS 465
to both the contracting parties, has been of the great-
est benefit to civilisation as a whole, and has been the
least affected by the flow of time." ^
The treaty of 1782, and the recognition by England
of American Independence, were still in the distant
future ; but, during the early weeks of Franklin's do-
mestication in the neighbourhood of Paris, it became
evident to all concerned that the affairs of the new
Republic were in firm and capable hands. Originality,
unalloyed by any tincture of eccentricity, marked every
private letter, and public memorandum, which issued
from the library at Passy. Franklin's breadth and
accuracy of knowledge, the force and acuteness of his
reasoning, and the ** masculine simplicity " of his style,
impressed veteran French ministers with a sensation
which was most unusual in their experience of official
business. The relations between America, and all
European countries except France, had been gravely
compromised by the premature and ill-considered action
of Congress ; and, for some while to come, Franklin
was occupied, not so much in engineering diplomatic
successes, as in effacing disagreeable impressions. He
began very quietly to court the favour, and invite the
confidence, of all the foreign ambassadors then resident
in Paris. The representatives, (we are told,) of those
Sovereigns, who had not recognised the Government of
the United States, were unable to extend any official
civilities to the Commissioners of the Republic ; but in
private they sought the acquaintance of Franklin, and
among them were some of his most esteemed and
intimate friends.^ He soon was on excellent terms
with the Spanish Minister, the Comte d'Aranda ; and
he estabUshed a claim on the gratitude of Prince
Bariatinski, the Russian ambassador, who was helped
out of a very formidable scrape by the famous
American's native good sense and inexhaustible good-
1 Wharton's Digest of International LaWy as quoted in the tenth
Chapter of his Introduction.
2 Life of Doctor Franklin^ by Jared Sparks ; Chapter 10.
VOL. IV. 2H
466 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
nature.^ Franklin's personal popularity, during the
later period of the war, was of invaluable service to
his political efficiency ; and the rapid growth of anti-
English sentiment, all the Continent over, was due
almost as much to his personal influence as to the
recklessness and maladroitness of Lord North's Cabinet.
The time came when Lord Shelburne told the House of
Peers, with a near approach to the truth, that George
the Third had but two enemies upon earth ; — one,
the whole world, and the other, his own Ministry.
When Franklin landed in France, Beaumarchais ex-
pressed a friendly uneasiness lest the old man, left to
his own guidance ** in that cursed country of meddling
and gossip," should fall into bad hands, and commit
some fatal blunder or indiscretion. It was sympathy
wasted. The Pennsylvanian veteran had the craft of
age without its feebleness ; and, during the next six or
seven years, the statesmen of France, and Spain, and
Holland were destined to learn by unpleasant expe-
rience that, whoever was left in the lurch, it would not
be Benjamin Franklin. From the very first moment of
his arrival in Paris he set himself deliberately, and
most artfully, at work to tempt Louis the Sixteenth's
Cabinet deeper and deeper into a policy which was the
salvation of America, but which in the end brought
utter ruin upon the French Monarchy.
When the American Revolution broke out, and for
some while afterwards, the French Government pursued
a line of conduct in accord with the true interests of
their own country, and consistent with the letter, if
not with the spirit, of their obligations towards the
Government of England. The Comte de Vergennes
pronounced Lord North's attempt to subjugate the
colonies by arms as ** an undertaking against Nature ; "
^ The story, which is most characteristic of Franklin, is told in the
Third Appendix to this volume.
THE FRENCH TREATIES 467
injurious, in any event, to Great Britain, and replete
with profit to France, if only France would remain
quiet, and allow the civil war to run its course beyond
the Atlantic. There was nothing, (Vergennes wrote,)
which need afflict the Court of Versailles in the spec-
tacle of England tearing herself to pieces with her own
hands. It soon became evident that a golden and un-
expected opportunity had arisen for the development
of French commerce. Great Britain's export-trade to
America had been killed outright ; and her mercantile
intercourse with the rest of the world was sorely ham-
pered by the activity and audacity of the American pri-
vateers. Arthur Lee told the Committee of Foreign
Affairs at Philadelphia how the Abbe Raynal, who had
just returned from London, informed him that nothing
disgusted the English so much as seeing their ports
crowded by French ships, which were engaged in car-
rying on the commerce of England with other nations.
'* Their merchants," said Lee, '* are obliged to have
recourse to this expedient to screen their merchandise.
They have been driven to this necessity by the number
and success of your cruisers in and about the Channel." ^
The aspect of foreign-built vessels, taking in cargoes of
home-made goods alongside the wharves of the Thames,
the Mersey, and the Bristol Avon, was gall and worm-
wood to British ship-owners ; but the British ministry
favoured the continuance, and connived at the irregu-
larities, of the traffic, because the employment of neutral
merchantmen was essential for the dispersion abroad
of those manufactures on which the prosperity of the
kingdom already mainly depended.^
^Arthur Lee from Paris ; September 9, 1777. "It is plain," wrote
Washington, "that France is playing a politic game ; enjoying all the ad-
vantages of our commerce without the expense of war."
2 " From this invasion of the American trade by foreigners one ad-
vantage is derived, if not to the commerce and navigation, yet to the
manufactures of England ; for these foreign nations, not having yet got
into the way of providing a proper assortment of goods for the American
market, resort hither for supply. This is felt in all the manufacturing
2H 2
468 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
If France had been content to maintain a pacific
attitude throughout the whole period of the American
troubles, she would have been rewarded by an immense
accession of wealth, and a secure and exalted position
among the nations of the world. Those advantages,
moreover, would have accrued to her automatically and
inevitably, without risk or exertion on her own part, and,
(which was a more important consideration still,) with no
sacrifice of her pubHc honour. But the intrigues of
Beaumarchais had already committed Louis the Six-
teenth and his ministers to a perilous, and worse than
questionable, series of transactions ; and, from this time
forward, the energy and pertinacity of Franklin allowed
them no rest, until they had sinned against their inter-
national duty too heinously to be forgiven by the people
and the parliament of England. The influence of the
great American Commissioner was apparent in every
department of French administration. King Louis was
timid and conscientious, and he had for his Finance
Minister a cautious and frugal Swiss banker ; but cer-
tain members of the Cabinet, who counted for a great
deal more than either His Majesty or Monsieur Necker,
were always as eager to give as Franklin was bold to
ask. The American Commissioners were soon accom-
modated with a loan of two million francs, bearing no
interest, and to be repaid only " when the United States
were settled in peace and prosperity." Another million
came from the Farmers General, in exchange for a per-
mission to purchase twenty thousand hogsheads of to-
bacco, at local prices, from the warehouses of Maryland
and Virginia. Four millions, ten millions, and six mill-
ions were afterwards forthcoming in three successive
years; and the total money obtained from France, at
the solicitation of Franklin, amounted at last to six and
twenty million francs. These great sums were thriftily,
and very knowingly, expended on the purchase of mili-
towns ; and the Ministry owe much of their quiet, during the present
contention, to that source." History of Europe in the Annual Register
£011776; Chapter 9.
THE FRENCH TREATIES 469
tary stores for Washington's armies, and on the equip-
ment of American cruisers which preyed upon British
commerce in European waters.^
Not a few of those cruisers were American only in
name. When the sloop of war which conveyed Franklin
across the ocean had deposited him at his destination,
she ranged the Channel in company with two consorts,
the Lexington and the Dolphin, the latter of which was
armed with French cannon, and manned exclusively
by French sailors. Within a few weeks the three ships
made fifteen prizes ; and their list of captures reached
an enormous figure before any of them met their fate.
When the Lexington was at last taken, her log-book,
and the letters and papers found on board of her, proved
that she had burned, sunk, and destroyed fifty-two
British merchantmen.^ The American captains found,
in the harbours of Normandy and Brittany, a sure
refuge from danger, a ready market for their prize-
goods, and all indispensable facilities for repairing,
re-fitting, and re-arming their vessels. They sailed in
and out of Havre, and Lorient, and Nantes, taking in
fifty barrels of gunpowder at one place, and filling up
their crews with prime French sailors at another, as
coolly and freely as if France were already at war with
England. When the English ambassador remonstrated,
the Versailles Cabinet gave him fair words, and osten-
tatiously prohibited any future breach of neutrality in
sham orders which, after a brief show of obedience,
were openly and systematically disregarded by the port
authorities. If such things were done on the very coast
of France, within forty leagues of her capital, it may
well be believed that violence, and illegality, ran riot in
distant quarters of the globe which lay outside the
range of diplomatic surveillance and protest. The
British trade with the West Indies was devastated by
ten or a dozen large corsairs, which hailed from Mar-
^ Franklin, Deane, and Lee to the Committee of Secret Correspondence ;
Paris, January 17, 1777. Wharton's Introduction ; Chapters 4 and lO.
2 Journal of Samuel Curwen ; October 4, 1777.
470 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
tinique and Guadeloupe ; and which, though they dis-
played the Stars and Stripes, and carried letters of
marque from Congress, were to all intents and purposes
not American privateers, but French pirates. Out of
a hundred and twenty-five fighting men, on board one
of these formidable vessels, only two were citizens of
the United States.^
Meanwhile the Ministers of King Louis, with less
and less effort at concealment, hurried forward their
military and naval preparations for a war which they
had long foreseen, and which they now began to antici-
pate with lively satisfaction. A very strong squadron
was assembled at Toulon, and an exceedingly powerful
fleet at Brest. According to the advices which reached
London, twenty-five frigates lay equipped for active
service in Brest Harbour, as well as no fewer than
thirty sail of the line, of which ten had been finished
off within the last eighteen months. "These ships,"
(so the reporter stated,) *'are supposed, by many judi-
cious people in marine architecture, to be the finest
moulded, and best built and completed, in the whole
French navy, and perhaps in Europe. Upwards of ten
^ Memoir e Justificatif pour servir de Reponse h V Expose des Motifs
de la Conduiie du Roi de France relativement a VAngleterre \ Londres,
1779. This masterpiece by Edward Gibbon, written in the French
language with an Englishman's accuracy of statement, and concentration
of purpose, was a special favourite with Lord Macaulay. In his copy of
Gibbon's Miscellaneous Works he drew, with his pencil, a line of appro-
bation down the entire margin of all its thirty-four pages. That was a
compliment which, in the case of similar productions, he reserved for one
or two of Swift's Examiners, and for three or four of Paul Louis Courier's
inimitable pieces.
The Evening Post of May 31, 1777, gives a list of French privateers
in the West Indies, with their gun-power, and the strength of their com-
plements. They mostly carried above a hundred men, and from fourteen
to eighteen cannon. A gentleman in the island of Grenada wrote to a
friend in Liverpool that it was not the Americans, but the French from
Martinique and St. Lucie, who were buccaneering in those seas. " It is
now," he said, "become customary, as soon as a man hears that his
vessel is taken, to go directly to Martinique, and buy as much as he can
of his own property in again, as things are sold pretty cheap for cash.
They are very expeditious with their sales ; for they neither wait for con-
demnation, nor any other form."
THE FRENCH TREATIES 47 1
thousand shipwrights, carpenters, caulkers, riggers,
blockmakers, sailmakers, and ropemakers are collected
at Brest. Every sailor has been ordered thither, from
Dunkirk to Bayonne ; and the Guinea, the Newfound-
land, and the West Indian ships dare not put to sea till
this fleet is manned and victualled." ^ It was a still
more ominous circumstance that a great number of
regiments had been drawn down to the coast, and em-
bodied in what was only too evidently intended for an
army of invasion. Everything was ready. Biscuit for
two months had been baked. Provisions were very
cheap, and all the magazines full. The rank and file
were punctually paid, and well clothed and disciplined.
The old and the weak had been carefully weeded out
from every battalion ; and twenty-five thousand troops,
the most effective in France, stood prepared for em-
barkation at a day's notice. The French naval officers
were full of fight, and their tongues were loud and un-
bridled. They looked to a war with England for the
acceleration of their wretchedly slow promotion, and
for the sadly needed rehabilitation of their professional
repute. A young nobleman, — who, gallant and ambi-
tious as he was, thought the war a crime, — has related
how, from admiral to midshipman, they all rejoiced
at the prospect of avenging those humiliating defeats
which, half a generation before, had been inflicted on
the French navy by Hawke and Boscawen.^
The strain was too severe to last. In the first week
of December, 1777, tidings of Burgoyne's surrender
arrived in Europe. On the way back from Passy,
whither he had hurried to congratulate Franklin, Beau-
marchais was thrown out of his carriage, and narrowly
escaped a fatal accident. As soon as the surgeon
allowed him ink and paper, he addressed the Comte de
Vergennes in a vein of not very decorous exultation.
^ It then was a common practice, when war appeared imminent, to
detain merchant vessels in harbour, so as to prevent a competition for the
services of seamen between the State, and the private employer.
2 Memoires du Due des Cars ; Tome I., Chapitre 5.
472 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
" This propitious event," he wrote, " is balm to my
wounds. Some god has whispered in my ear that King
Louis will not disappoint the hopes of the faithful
friends whom America has acquired for herself in
France. It is my voice which calls out on their behalf
from beneath my blankets : * Out of the depths have I
cried unto thee. Oh Lord ! Lord, hear my prayer ! ' *'
Beaumarchais, as at this period of his life was generally
the case, spoke the mind of Paris. When the news of
Saratoga spread abroad in the city, the partisans of
England disappeared from view ; the theatres resounded
with martial demonstrations ; and the buzz of drawing-
rooms and coffee-houses swelled into a unanimous cry
for war. The demand in France for vigorous and im-
mediate action was re-inforced by a potent auxiliary
from beyond her own borders. When the New Year
opened, the Elector of Bavaria died ; the Emperor of
.Germany moved his troops across the Bavarian frontier ;
and Frederic the Great perceived that for himself, and
for Prussia, the fateful hour had come. Resolved, so far
as in him lay, that the French armies should be em-
ployed elsewhere than in Germany, he redoubled his
efforts to tempt, and drive, Louis the Sixteenth into open
hostilities against the British Crown. In a series of
jumbled metaphors, which he would never have ven-
tured to use when writing to Voltaire, he commanded
his envoy in Paris to be all eyes and ears, to sift the
matter to the bottom, and to shake every sail loose.
" This," wrote the King, " is the moment for exerting
yourself to the summit of your strength. You must
force the deaf to hear, and the blind to see ; and be sure
that you wake up the lethargic to some purpose." ^
The French Government did not need pressing. A
hint was conveyed to Doctor Franklin, and his col-
leagues, that it would be agreeable to His Majesty if
they renewed the offer which they had made him a
1 Le Roi Frederic k M. de Goltz, Berlin, 12 Janvier ; Potsdam,
II Fevrier, 1778. These exhortations are written by the king's own hand,
as a postscript to the official despatches.
THE FRENCH TREATIES 473
twelvemonth back ; and they acted on the intimation
given. Some time was consumed in arranging the
preliminaries ; it was necessary that Spain should be
consulted, or at all events kept informed, at each suc-
cessive stage of the negotiation ; but on the sixth of
February 1778 the signatures were affixed to a Treaty
of Commerce, and a Treaty of Amity and Alliance,
between France and the United States. The French
Government, paying a tribute by anticipation to the
principle of the Monroe Doctrine, solemnly disclaimed
all intention to re-conquer Canada. No condition
whatever was exacted from America, except a promise
that she would never purchase peace with Great
Britain by consenting to resume her subjection to the
British Crown. The ancient monarchy had dealt very
handsomely with the young Republic ; and the Prime
Minister of Spain, who did his best to delay the busi-
ness, and who disliked it all the more because he
feared that his own Court would be compelled before
long to follow suit, pronounced the conduct of the Ver-
sailles Cabinet a glaring instance of Quixotism. He
compared the American Commissioners to those Roman
Consuls whom the kings of Pontus and Cappadocia
approached, in the attitude of suppliants, with a humble
petition for their aid and support in war.^
On the twentieth March those Commissioners were
granted the honour of a public reception at the Court
of France. An immense throng assembled to watch
Franklin pass. His bust and portrait had been multi-
plied by tens of thousands all the kingdom over ; his
miniature was carried in the lids of snuff-boxes, in
watch-cases, and in the setting of rings ; and the
Gazettes of Europe, (said one who grudged him his
celebrity,) contained a greater number of panegyrics
on Franklin than on any other individual who had been
born since Gazettes were printed. And now the whole
tribe of his admirers, high and humble, had an oppor-
^ Doniol ; Tome II., Chapitrcs 10, 11 ; Tome III., Chapitre i.
474 ^-^^ AMERICAN REVOLUTION
tunity of seeing the man himself, at the culminating
hour of his prolonged and notable career. He was
greeted by acclamations, and clapping of hands, in the
street 
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